Key Estate Planning Strategies for Small Business Owners in Kansas
Kansas Estate Planning Attorney Shares Two Key Estate Planning Strategies for Small Business Owners
Owning a business is a big deal, whether your company is large or small. Business owners have many details to manage to keep their business running smoothly, day in and day out. It’s all too easy to focus all of your time and energy on the day to day activities of owning and running a business and have little to no time left over to plan for the future. When you do find time to think about your business’s future, it is exciting and inspiring to think about the ways you can grow your business and make it stronger. There’s another essential topic that involves the future of your business that you need to think about, which is the issue of what would happen if an unexpected illness, injury, or death removed your ability to run your business on a temporary or permanent basis.
Fortunately, you can address the need to plan for the future of your small business through the estate planning process. If you have an estate plan, take time to examine it to see whether and how your business is addressed in it and make changes as needed. If you don’t have an estate plan, the future of your business is an excellent reason to begin working on one, which will benefit both your family and your business. The following three strategies can get you started on the path to preserving the future of your business through estate planning.
The first step in estate planning on an individual level is also the firsts step in estate planning for your small business. It is the simplest estate planning document, and yet, without it, the future of your business is left open to the probate process and its often slow and tedious timeline. Since your business isn’t something that you can just put on a shelf until it’s time to address it, having a document that can be acted upon immediately upon the event of your death will let your business continue operating in your absence. In your will, you’ll set out instructions for distributing your personal assets. Your will also enables you to do something specific for your business which is critical to its continued operation. In your will, you name an executor for your business, a particular person who will continue your business’s operation in the event of your passing.
Naming an executor for your business is an excellent first step, but it is essential that you not stop there. Your executor will need guidance for running your business, even if they are already working with you at your company. This is where a succession plan comes in. A succession plan is a document that would enable someone to take over the operation of your business in your absence. The aim of your succession plan is to make the transition seamless so that the people whom your business serves can continue experiencing “business as usual.” Creating a succession plan involves deciding who will take over the various types of decision-making involved in running your business. It also involves ensuring that those people will be able to access all of the information that they’ll need to run the business.
To learn about estate planning in Kansas, schedule an initial consultation with Wichita attorney J. Joseph Weber by calling our office or contact us through our website. Appointments are available Monday through Friday, between 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. We occasionally offer evening or weekend appointments.