Hi Irene,
Our best friends, who have no money, wanted to go into business with us. They asked us for a large sum to open an immersion preschool-3rd grade and we said no, opening a school did not interest us. We both have kids who need special care and ours was in their daycare until recently.
We moved away and I started looking into all sorts of businesses and decided a year later to open my own commercial daycare, NOT immersion, and a totally different business model in that we'd work with art and very young children in a nursery setting. We live in different towns.
They are accusing us of stealing their ideas, abusing them, and lying to them and they want money from us to resolve things. We have some shared friends, all of whom I have introduced to them, not the other way around, and our friends' kids are in their daycare. We even have an upcoming event we have to be at together, which a dear friend of mine is organizing, and her child is in their daycare.
When friends are "banking" on your friendship (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/irene-s-levine/when-friends-are-banking_b_801180.html)