Ensure your Legacy with a Buy-Sell Agreement

A buy-sell agreement is an agreement between owners that allows you or the business to buy out a co-owner’s share based on a number of triggering events like retirement, death, bankruptcy, disability, divorce or sale to a third party. You can enter into a buy-sell agreement with your co-owners at any time, but it often makes sense to do so shortly after the business is formed and when new owners are brought in.

One of the first things any business owner should consider is how to protect against events that may threaten the future of your business, beyond the basic property or casualty protection.

• It minimizes the possibility that the business may fall into the hands of outsiders
• The process establishes a value for the business for estate tax purposes

• It creates a market for the business; the deceased owner’s estate has an automatic purchaser for their ownership interest
• You convert an otherwise illiquid asset into virtually immediate liquidity for the deceased’s heirs