Family Buisiness Planning

Our business succession planning helps you, as a business owner, develop the right strategies to maintain or transfer control of your company as personal needs and requirements dictate. We can help you provide for the future management of your business with the people you choose. When family control spans several generations or is complicated by death, incapacity, or divorce and remarriage, we handle succession issues with tact and sensitivity. We can create buy-sell agreements with owners to meet their tax, business succession, and estate planning goals. And, if the eventual disposition of your business is the most practical choice, we guide you to the most tax-efficient strategies for a sale, merger, or liquidation.

Management of an entity does not just consist of you, your spouse, or children. Every family business needs the right legal and organizational structure. We focus on the best structure that will enable you to grow and succeed. Our lawyers assemble family businesses to take many forms: sole proprietorships, partnerships, limited liability companies, S corporations, C corporations, holding companies, and even publicly traded companies under family control. In recommending any entity form, we emphasize flexible operating agreements that allow for future change and growth. Our practical knowledge of financing enables us to understand how entity forms impact future capital raising and operations. Many of our lawyers have trained in accounting or hold postgraduate tax degrees, and we are well-equipped to work with family entities. We also work effectively with your accountants and tax preparers for maximum tax efficiency and wealth preservation.

We will also show you how the right compensation and benefit structures can give you, your family, and employees added incentives to grow your company. We can structure tools such as incentive and deferred compensation, cash bonus plans, profit-sharing programs, and supplemental savings plans to provide your business with the means to grow while giving you and your family members added financial and tax benefits. Because we work with so many family businesses of all sizes, we can structure the best approach for you.

Using the experience and resources we have developed working with a wide range of family businesses, we craft personalized tax and estate planning solutions that maximize financial benefits while minimizing tax liability. For example, we can create a variety of trusts and lifetime gifts to shelter family assets and minimize tax impact, and establish independent asset management arrangements for your convenience. Our wealth planning services can integrate your insurance, tax-deferred compensation, and IRA distributions. And whether your estate plan involves a simple will or a series of complex trusts, we work closely with you, your accountants, and fiduciaries to ensure that all the details of estate and trust administration are handled properly, allowing you to carry out your wishes with minimal cost and maximum efficiency.