Jul 30, 2026 · 27 min · 14 segments
Brent chats with attorney Don Ford about how to set a family company up for successful succession. They talk about interpersonal aspects, managing expectations, corporate governance, creditor issues…
Sounds familiar to me.
I've noticed one or two, a couple, one or two.
Um, Well, you want to jump in? I mean, I have some ideas about this topic, but I think the general theme is some of those high net worth people we're talking about have businesses.
And although I hear a lot of people say like, I need a will or I need to do my will.
When you have a business, that's really not sufficient.
There's a little bit more to it.
So you want to give people some flavor for that.
Yeah, so look, I think when we're talking about clients who have businesses, there's a couple of different issues that jump out, right? So the first issue is going to be, hey, look, if you had a stroke and you're the only one on the business bank account or the only one able to vote the business shares or run the business or do any of those kinds of things, what happens if you all of a sudden one day are not able to do those things? That's a big concern for the small business or the mom and pop business is no longer as small as mom and pop thought it was 10 years ago.
Right, but then there's also the issue from an estate planning estate tax perspective, how do we deal with that.
You know kind of the age old adage of we don't want to have to sell the family farm because dad dies right because we got to pay estate taxes so same thing with a business.
If the businesses is doing well today, but you know 10 years from now, we anticipate it's going to be a 10 X or 20 X or 100 X. whatever that is, you know, our opportunity to really do something about it effective is today, not 10 years from now.
Um, but if you're already 10 years down the road and the business has grown substantially, then what do you do at that point? Right? So there's kind of these two different buckets.
I want to make sure my kids get the benefit out of all my labor for all these years.
And how do we structure that? So I think those are the two big buckets that we would generally talk about.
Sounds familiar to me.
I've noticed one or two, a couple, one or two.
Um, Well, you want to jump in? I mean, I have some ideas about this topic, but I think the general theme is some of those high net worth people we're talking about have businesses.
And although I hear a lot of people say like, I need a will or I need to do my will.
When you have a business, that's really not sufficient.
There's a little bit more to it.
So you want to give people some flavor for that.
Yeah, so look, I think when we're talking about clients who have businesses, there's a couple of different issues that jump out, right? So the first issue is going to be, hey, look, if you had a stroke and you're the only one on the business bank account or the only one able to vote the business shares or run the business or do any of those kinds of things, what happens if you all of a sudden one day are not able to do those things? That's a big concern for the small business or the mom and pop business is no longer as small as mom and pop thought it was 10 years ago.
Right, but then there's also the issue from an estate planning estate tax perspective, how do we deal with that.
You know kind of the age old adage of we don't want to have to sell the family farm because dad dies right because we got to pay estate taxes so same thing with a business.
If the businesses is doing well today, but you know 10 years from now, we anticipate it's going to be a 10 X or 20 X or 100 X. whatever that is, you know, our opportunity to really do something about it effective is today, not 10 years from now.
Um, but if you're already 10 years down the road and the business has grown substantially, then what do you do at that point? Right? So there's kind of these two different buckets.
I want to make sure my kids get the benefit out of all my labor for all these years.
And how do we structure that? So I think those are the two big buckets that we would generally talk about.
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