What, No Succession Plan?

For family-owned businesses, making sure that the company stays in family hands usually is of paramount importance. Indeed, in a recent survey, most family business owners cite control and autonomy as their main reasons for starting a business in the first place. Yet the majority did not have solid succession plans. Worse, while two-thirds had estate plans that may have addressed the issue, those plans had not been updated for, on average, more than 12 years.