Protect The Future of Your Business with Estate Planning
An important part of Business Development is planning for the future, and in the case of this post, the far future. Andrew Flusche provides this guest post on Estate Planning:
You’ve worked hard for years to build a solid business. You serve your clients well, and you’ve built up a lot of value in your venture. But what happens when you pass away?
We never like to think about end of life issues, but we owe it to our family to plan for the inevitable. Fortunately, careful planning now will help to ensure that your business provides for your family for years to come.
Execute a will
If you died today, what would happen to your business and the rest of your property? The government has default rules that kick in, if you die without a will. To control exactly what happens, you have to take action now.
A basic will is a document that says where your property goes upon your death. You could leave your business assets to someone who could carry on your mission and continue serving your clients. At the simplest level, the will just says “I give X to John.” This lets you control the flow of your property, disregarding the default rules. Every adult should have a validly executed will.
Consider a trust
If your situation is more complex, you might be a good candidate for a trust. Boiling it down, a trust is an entity that can own property. You could create a trust during your life that actually owns your business and/or personal assets. Or the trust could spring into existence when you pass away.
Two common reasons to consider a trust are to save taxes (typically only a concern for fairly wealthy people) and to manage assets. If you create and fund a trust during your life, it could continue earning the revenue from your business and providing income to your family, even after you are long gone. This could be a great tool to provide stability for a business over multiple generations.
Get expert help
Would you let a computer program do brain surgery on you? I’ll bet the results wouldn’t be very positive. For the same reason, you shouldn’t rely on a computer program or free template for your estate plan. Even if you think your situation is simple, there might be ways to save on taxes or better fulfill your wishes that only an estate planning attorney could determine.
This article barely scratches the surface of available estate planning techniques. But it hopefully illustrates a few ideas of what you can accomplish.
Andrew Flusche is a lawyer in Fredericksburg, Virginia attorney who focuses on estate planning, business issues, and Virginia reckless driving defense.
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