You always assumed that your estate planning would be simple when it came to your family business. You were going to leave it to your children. They could run it just as successfully as you did.
Unfortunately, now it looks like your dream will not come true. The kids just are not interested. They have their own careers and their own skills. They don’t want to give that up to run your company, no matter how successful it has been over the years.
This is a common problem that parents face, and you need to decide how to proceed. Usually, the best way to do it is simply to sell the business.
If you do, you have to carefully consider your own financial position. Here are a few questions to ask:
- If you sell, will you use that money for retirement?
- Do you have other means of paying for your retirement, seeing as how you thought your kids would run the business when you stepped away?
- Will the proceeds of the sale then enter into your estate and need to get divided between the children?
- What is the sale going to mean for your employees?
- What is the true value of the business on the open market? How do you determine that value accurately?
Once you answer these questions, you can start moving forward and making the perfect estate plan for your family. Remember, it is important to do this as soon as you can, rather than putting it off until the last second, since your situation is more complicated than you hoped it would be.