Practice area · 04
The business passes on your terms.
For most owners, the business is the estate. Whether it moves to family, partners, or a buyer, that transition is designed — or it happens by default, on someone else's timeline.
Overview
A business that hasn't planned its transition usually meets one of three endings: a forced sale to settle the estate, a deadlock between heirs who can't agree, or a slow decline while the question is avoided.
Succession planning answers concrete questions: who takes over, what the ownership is worth and how it's valued, and where the cash comes from to buy out a departing owner's family.
The work coordinates with the estate plan itself — because an entity plan that contradicts the trust holding it isn't a plan.
What this covers
Agreements for the transition you choose.
Buy-sell agreements
The contract that governs what happens when an owner dies, retires, or exits — with valuation and funding terms that hold up.
Entity & ownership restructuring
LLCs, S corporations, and holding structures aligned with both the business's operation and the estate plan.
Family business transitions
Moving management and ownership to the next generation deliberately — including the family members who won't be owners.
Key-person & continuity planning
Coverage and authority documents that keep the company running through an unexpected loss.
Valuation & funding coordination
Appraisals, installment structures, and insurance funding arranged so a buyout is possible when needed.
Exit & sale-readiness planning
Getting the entity, its records, and its governance ready for the sale you'll eventually want to make.
How the work is done
Practical questions, answered in order.
The work starts with the hard questions in plain terms: what is this business worth, who should own it, and who can actually run it. Structure follows the answers — never the reverse.
Agreements are drafted to be usable by the people who will hold them years from now, when memory of the original handshake has faded and only the document speaks.
Next step
Decide the ending while you can.
A succession consultation maps where the business stands today — ownership, value, key people — and what a sensible transition would take. The earlier it starts, the more options are still open.
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