Your living trust and your company’s documents, written by the same attorney so they agree.
5.0 · 22 Google reviewsAvvo 10.0 “Superb”Since 1997Most business owners have two sets of documents that were never introduced to each other. The estate plan says who inherits the shares. The company’s bylaws, operating agreement and buy-sell agreement say who may own them, who runs the company, and at what price an owner’s share is bought out. When the two disagree, the family usually finds out after the owner can no longer fix it.
The Flaig Law Firm handles both sides. Donald W. Flaig has practiced estate planning and business law since 1997, from the firm’s Westlake Village office. Because the same attorney writes the living trust and the company documents, they are drafted against each other from the start, instead of reconciled in a crisis by two people who have never spoken.
The work is practical. Your trust names who inherits the company, and the company’s own records are updated so that person can actually vote the shares and sign the checks. Your buy-sell agreement sets a price, and the insurance or payment terms behind it are checked against your estate plan and the estate tax. Your spouse’s interest in a business built during the marriage is accounted for in both places.
This page is for owners ready to hire for both. For the ideas behind the work, the five decisions it has to settle and the rules that apply, read estate planning for a family business.
The documents that protect the people you love and keep your estate out of court.
The structure, agreements and filings that keep the company sound and in good standing.
Each of these is a question your estate plan cannot answer alone, and your company documents cannot either. Each link goes to a page that explains the rule and the fix.
When most of an estate is one company, federal estate tax is due in cash nine months after death. Two Internal Revenue Code provisions can let the business fund it over time, if the plan keeps the estate eligible.
Read →Property taxThe company itself moves cleanly through the trust. The real property it operates from follows a different set of rules, and since February 16, 2021 those rules can reassess it.
Read →SuccessionFour tests that decide whether the company can survive the transfer to the next generation, and what to do when the honest answer is no.
Read →Community propertyIn California the name on the stock certificate does not settle it. What community property does to the plan at death, to gifts of shares, to the buyout and to the income tax basis.
Read →IncapacityA living trust settles who owns the company. It does not put anyone on the board, in an office or on the bank account. Those seats are filled through the company's own records.
Read →S corporationsStock in a revocable trust is right while the owner is alive. The day the owner dies, that stock is on a two year clock that the trust has to be written for.
Read →Life insuranceAn insured buyout is common. Since 2024, a policy the company owns counts toward the value of the very shares it was bought to purchase.
Read →Co-ownersWhat happens to an owner's share at death, disability, divorce or departure, at what price, and with what money, decided while every owner is still at the table.
Read →
Your family and your business, in one free and completely confidential conversation with the attorney who would do the work.
5.0 from 22 Google reviewsAvvo 10.0 “Superb”Practicing since 1997
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