Estate Planning for Business Owners in Los Angeles

If you own a business, your estate plan has a second job. It must do everything a family plan does — and also answer questions most plans never face: Who runs the business if you can’t? Who can sign payroll next week, not next year? What is the business worth, and who decides? What does your operating agreement say happens to your interest — and does it match what your trust says?

When those documents contradict each other, the contradiction surfaces at the worst possible time. Coordinating them is the core of business-owner planning.

Why Business Ownership Complicates Estate Planning

Three reasons. Valuation: a business interest is hard to value, and in probate it gets appraised by a court-appointed referee on the court’s timeline, while the business itself needs decisions daily. Succession: ownership passing to heirs is not the same as management passing to someone capable. Documents: operating agreements, buy-sell agreements, and corporate records all have their own transfer provisions, and your trust must work with them — not against them.

Buy-Sell Agreements and Your Personal Plan

If you have partners, a buy-sell agreement determines what happens to your interest at death or disability — who can buy it, at what price, funded how. Your trust and your buy-sell must point in the same direction: the trust should hold the interest in a way the agreement permits, and the agreement’s valuation and funding mechanics should reflect what your family would actually need. I review both together, because reviewed separately they have a way of quietly disagreeing.

Entity Structures and Asset Protection

For owners with rental property or multiple ventures, entity structuring — including family LLCs — can organize ownership, simplify succession, and add a measure of liability separation. These structures have real tax consequences, good and bad, and they are frequently sold harder than they are understood. The dual credential matters here: I understand both the legal documents and the tax structure of your business, so the advice accounts for both sides of the ledger.

Federal Estate Tax Planning

Successful businesses have a way of pushing estates toward the federal estate tax exemption — currently approximately $13.61 million per person, but a number Congress has changed before and will change again. For owners approaching that range, planning opportunities exist now that may not exist later: valuation strategies, gifting programs, and trust structures that move appreciation out of the taxable estate. A plan built this year should anticipate the exemption’s movement, not assume its permanence.