Estate Planning for Owners

Posted by Yulun Hung
Written by Burns Associates

If you’re a business owner, you probably have plenty on your plate just meeting each day’s challenges, but you’d be well advised to do some longer-range planning. About 70 percent of family-owned businesses fail to make a successful transition into the second generation. About 90 percent fail to be successfully transferred to a third generation of family members. These statistics reveal both the difficulty of transferring from one generation to the next and the lack of planning for successorship.

Small business owners have a host of special needs. Who will take over the business after you die? Do the surviving spouse or the children get control of the stock? Which ones run the company, and which merely share in the profits?

This article will look at some of the issues that you and your lawyer should discuss if you want the business to continue after your death. In a later article, we’ll look at some of the issues involved in selling your interest in the business and the best way to transfer ownership to the new owners.

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