Making partner once conjured up images of crazy wealth, but these days you may end up paying your company. Just be thankful your fortunes aren't pegged to office space in Detroit.

As the economy continues to flail, your clients who are partners in firms from law and accounting to consultancies are dealing with an occurrence that hasn't happened in decades: capital calls.

To most people, the word "partner" evokes images of wealth: Moneymen raking in fat profits from established companies. But after decades of expansion, many are getting a sharp reminder that that street runs two ways. Now that companies are stumbling, it's the partners who are expected to pony up to keep the operations humming-or in some cases, at least keep the doors open-until things get better.

It may be enough for a partner to decide he simply wants to allow his stake to be diluted (if that's an option) or even leave the firm.

Herb Daroff, a Boston-based attorney and certified financial planning practitioner specializing in private business ownership and management succession, says this is shocking many younger partners who have grown used to the last two decades of nearly uninterrupted economic growth. "Even though now a lot of people might want to be partners to share in the profits, guess what? Being a partner in a professional enterprise means that the firms are saying, 'Lots of you guys are all OK sharing in the income of the firm [but now that] the firm is having losses, you've got to chip in.'"

So the question for you in dealing with your clients has become: How to plan for an unexpected capital call?

Gregory Singer, director of research for Bernstein's Wealth Management Group, began to look at the question a few years ago when clients who owned commercial real estate investments were asking what their options were. As a result of their research, they did customized planning for several real estate families. "We put them in a good position to weather this event," he says.

Singer divides asset allocation into three "buckets": business operation reserve; core capital reserve; and third, excess capital reserve.

The business operation reserve is where money should be kept in case of a call for capital from a partnership interest. The core capital is the amount of money needed to endow the client's lifetime spending, and should be calculated with confidence that the asset allocation is reflecting long-term risk. For most clients, that means with a low-risk tolerance. The excess capital bucket holds what's left over, and should be earmarked for money not needed for lifetime spending, which often means it goes to philanthropy, or is invested in illiquid instruments like private equity or venture capital.

Singer starts with the business operation reserve, asking the client what amount of money he or she will need to keep around for unexpected business funding. He looks at the past market conditions for as far back as data is available to get a sense of the worst-case scenario. Then he figures out how much cash the business needed during times of crisis. He advises clients to use their own information, and, if it's available, that of their competitors. "Take as much information as you need to figure out how much cash you need to have on hand in a different market environment," he says.

For his report on commercial real estate, the data went back nearly 50 years. Singer and his colleagues looked at significant increases in vacancies in various markets, as well as decreases in rents, and any other storm clouds on commercial office owners' horizons. "If we stress tested your commercial real estate portfolio, how much capital would you need to potentially put in your business in a given year?" Singer said. Among the dark clouds was refunding risk: the possibility that the companies would not be able to refinance debt. "How much cash do you need to get through a year with peak refunding maturities?" Singer asks.

And by cash, Singer means a high quality base of fixed income securities. But, he does not limit them to short-term cash equivalents. He includes debt with durations well into the intermediate maturities. The duration depends on the company in question, and how often they have historically needed a cash infusion from partners. He says the trick is to try to match the duration of the cash reserves to the typical amount of time the business can go without fresh infusions. (In terms of price appreciation, the worst of the worst performers, over nearly the past half-century covered in the report, was Detroit office space.)