ABSTRACT
Partnerships, as vehicles of small business enterprise, are some of the most common commercial structures in the South Pacific countries as well elsewhere. A partnership is usually treated as a consensual arrangement which gives rise to relations of agency between the partners, however many there might be, and whatever the precise terms of their defined relationship under the partnership agreement. It is formed when an entity that complies with all of the elements of the statutory definition comes into existence. The basic import of the statutory definition is that a partnership is the relation which exists between persons carrying on business in common with a view to profit. The legal relationship between partners is a formal one, which the law puts in terms of the language of rights, duties, liabilities and powers. However, the law has never been able to retreat entirely into an empty formalism when considering the nature of the relationships between particular partners.
