Business Succession Planning That Protects What You Built
You spent years building your business. At some point, whether by choice or by circumstance, someone else will need to run it. The question is whether that transition happens on your terms or in a crisis. Business succession planning is how you make sure it happens on your terms.
What sets our approach apart is that we handle both the business law and the estate planning side of succession. Most attorneys specialize in one or the other. Your business attorney drafts the buy-sell agreement but does not coordinate it with your trust. Your estate planning attorney sets up a trust but does not account for your operating agreement. We do both, because a succession plan that does not coordinate these documents is a plan with gaps.
Jon Miller is licensed in Utah, Arizona, and Texas, and works with business owners across all three states on succession strategies tailored to their business structure, their family situation, and their long-term goals.
Why Business Succession Planning Matters
Without a succession plan, the future of your business depends on state default rules, court proceedings, and the ability of your family or partners to figure things out under pressure. That is not a plan. That is a gamble.
Here is what happens when a business owner dies or becomes incapacitated without a succession plan. The business may need to stop operating while the courts sort out who has authority. Partners may disagree about the value of the deceased owner's interest. The family may not have the cash to buy out the business interest, and the remaining owners may not have the cash to buy it from the family. Key employees leave because the future is uncertain. Clients and vendors lose confidence.
Succession planning prevents all of this. It defines who takes over, how they take over, and how everyone gets paid. It removes uncertainty from a situation that is already difficult enough.
Succession Planning Tools
A succession plan is not a single document. It is a coordinated set of legal tools, each designed to handle a specific piece of the transition. The right combination depends on your business structure, your ownership situation, and who you want to take over.
Buy-sell agreements define what happens to an owner's interest when they die, become disabled, retire, or want to leave the business. They establish a price or pricing mechanism and a funding source, so the transition is not held hostage to negotiations during a crisis.
Family succession planning addresses the unique challenges of transferring a business to children or other family members. This involves ownership transfer strategies, governance structures, and coordination with the broader estate plan to treat all heirs fairly.
Key employee and management succession covers situations where the best successor is not a family member but a trusted employee or management team. This includes management buyouts, retention tools like phantom equity, and transition timelines.
Where Business Law Meets Estate Planning
Your business interest is probably one of your largest assets. How it is handled in your estate plan has major consequences for your family and your business partners.
Consider a common scenario. You own 50% of an LLC with a partner. You have a revocable living trust for your estate plan. If your operating agreement does not allow your trust to become a member, your death could trigger a forced buyout or dissolution. If your buy-sell agreement sets a price that conflicts with the value in your estate plan, your family and your partner end up in a dispute. If your life insurance is owned personally rather than by a trust, the proceeds may be subject to estate tax.
We design your succession plan so that your operating agreement, trust, buy-sell agreement, and insurance policies all work together. Your trust is authorized as a member of your LLC. Your buy-sell agreement uses a valuation method that both sides have agreed to in advance. Your insurance funding is structured to maximize the benefit to your family and your business.
This coordination is where most succession plans fall short, and it is where having one attorney who handles both business law and estate planning makes the biggest difference.
How We Work With You
Succession planning starts with a conversation about your business, your goals, and your concerns. We need to understand your ownership structure, your family situation, your key employees, and what you want to happen when you eventually step away.
From there, we develop a strategy and draft the documents. For most business owners, this includes updates to the operating agreement, a buy-sell agreement, coordination with your estate plan (or creating one if you do not have one yet), and recommendations for insurance funding.
We use flat-fee pricing wherever possible, so you know your cost before we start. The scope depends on the complexity of your business and ownership structure. We will give you a clear quote after the initial consultation.
Multi-State Succession Planning
Jon Miller is licensed in Utah, Arizona, and Texas. If your business operates across state lines, or if owners are located in different states, your succession plan needs to account for the laws in each relevant jurisdiction.
LLC laws vary by state. Default rules for what happens when a member dies, how buyouts work, and what rights a deceased member's heirs have are different in Utah, Arizona, and Texas. A succession plan drafted under Utah law may not produce the result you expect if the LLC is formed in Arizona.
We make sure your succession documents account for the laws of the states where your business is formed and operates. One attorney, three states, and a plan that works everywhere it needs to.
Frequently Asked Questions
Learn More
Read our complete guide: The Complete Guide to Business Succession Planning
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