This is your legacy. And yet so many questions often remain that have no easy answers. How do you plan for it? Who is the next leader of your business? Who is most qualified? What roles will other family members have? How will you include key team members who are not part of the family? How do you involve family members who do not have the interest or capacity to be a part of the business? How do you determine the value of your company? How do you transfer ownership? How will succession planning be paid for? And these are just the beginning.

Succession planning is a tricky task with many complicated elements, and once again it is especially so for a family business. With over 45 years of helping generation after generation of clients create, revise, and implement succession plans, we at Cray Kaiser have developed methods and an approach for working with all generations of a business. We know the importance of creating a succession plan at the right time (it is never too early, by the way), involving the right people, and preventing as much conflict and high emotion as possible.

Having the people and documents in place far in advance helps avoid difficult situations. Especially in unforeseen and tragic circumstances that can leave family members and businesses without direction, creating conflict and drama at a time already filled with too much emotion. With our experience, we know what questions you need to ask – even the difficult ones – and answer to smoothly guide you through succession planning and then implementing these complicated transitions.