Business Succession & High Liability Companies
Business Succession:
Are you a business owner? If you are, do you have a plan for when something happens to you?
What happens when you DIE or become DISABLED? Without a plan, your friends and family will likely liquidate or run your business into the ground because they don’t know what to do with it. If you don’t have a plan, we can help. Especially after the pandemic of 2020, I learned how having a person named to run your business in your place was definitely not enough. My backup person knew how to get to my office and how to do estate planning, but that was about it.
She didn’t know the password for my computer or how to find it. She didn’t know my staff or how to contact them. She had never seen our systems for managing potential new clients, current clients or past clients. Even though we had worked together on litigated cases, we
I learned how important it is to have a plan in case disaster strikes. I am working on creating a plan for my business. I want all of my colleagues and fellow business owners to have the protection of a plan just in case. When life happens, you want to be ready.
A business succession plan or a disaster plan is like an instruction letter for the person who will come in and run the business if and when something happens to you. It can be as simple as an instruction letter and an insurance policy that pays out to the company so that the company can hire someone to replace you until it can be sold.
The plan doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does require you to make some decisions. Find a time when your partners (if you have them) and/or your spouse can get together to talk about what you want your plan to be and include us in that plan so that we can craft the best plan for you and your business.
High Liability:
Do you operate a business that exposes you to the possibility of lawsuits?
For example:
- Real Estate Investors (landlord/tenant): Business owners are subject to lawsuits filed by vendors and tenants. In this category, real estate investors have varying levels of liability depending on the types of real estate in which they invest. In the landlord/tenant business, single family homes ownership have a lower liability for lawsuits than apartment or hotel owners.
- Medical offices: Medical practices comes with a higher chance of being sued than other businesses often because mistakes can have serious results.
- Legal Practices: For attorneys, the liability changes depending on the damage that can be caused by a mistake. Firms handling high net worth clients, high risk transactions, and family law are more likely to be sued by a disgruntled client with or even without cause.
Protect yourself and your business. It is helpful to combine various corporate entities and trusts, such as Limited Liability Companies (LLCs) and Domestic Asset Protection Trust (DAPT) or Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust (ILIT), Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts (SLAT) for high liability protection, inheritance protection, asset protection and privacy.
Various levels of planning and protection can be set up depending on the type of business, the location of assets, and the future plans for a client.
It’s almost impossible to guarantee protection of your assets simply because we cannot control what will happen in every circumstance. However, we can make the task of accessing your personal assets very difficult. The more hurdles we place in front of your potential opposing parties the less likely they will choose to jump each one.
Get started today by calling for your appointment. You can take stock of your own situation by checking your beneficiaries. The first step to making a positive change is becoming aware of how you are set up right now.
