Buy-sell agreements
What happens to an owner’s interest on death, disability, retirement, or a decision to leave. A price (or a way to set one) and a funding source, so the transition is not held hostage to a negotiation in a crisis.
Business succession
A transition on your terms — not in a crisis.
You spent years building the company. At some point someone else will run it. The question is whether that happens because you planned it, or because a court, a partner, or a grieving spouse had to guess.
Both sides of the file
Most attorneys do the company or the estate. We do both.
A business attorney drafts a buy-sell and never looks at the trust. An estate-planning attorney drafts a trust and never reads the operating agreement. The gap between those two documents is where families and partners end up in a fight.
Without a plan, the company may have to stop while a court decides who has authority. Partners argue about value. The family doesn’t have cash to buy the interest, and the remaining owners don’t have cash to buy the family. Key people leave. That is not a plan. That is a gamble.
Family succession
Transferring a company to children or other family — ownership, governance, and an estate plan that treats heirs fairly without forcing the ones who work there to buy out the ones who don’t.
Key employees
When the best successor is not a family member. Management buyouts, retention tools, and a timeline so people don’t leave while the future is unclear.
The estate plan
The trust, the operating agreement, the buy-sell, and the insurance have to agree. Most succession plans fail here — because two different lawyers wrote two different stories.
How the documents have to fit
The trust is allowed to be a member. The buy-sell has a price. The insurance actually pays.
Common failure: you own half an LLC, you have a trust, and the operating agreement does not allow the trust to become a member. Your death triggers a forced buyout or a dissolution. Or the buy-sell names a price that fights the value in the estate plan. Or the life insurance is owned personally and lands in the wrong place.
We write them as one file. Utah, Arizona, and Texas — including companies that cross those lines, because the default rules are not the same in each state.
For owners
Tell me how the company is owned today.
Thirty minutes. We’ll look at the operating agreement, the estate plan, and the gap between them — then quote a flat fee if you want to close it.