Who Are Your Long Term Succession Planning Partners?
I won’t sugar coat it, it’s your life insurance agent – or it should be.
You lawyer will draw up the documents to make the transfers of ownership and management legal. But he or she will not write a check to cover the costs of doing so.
Your accountant will figure out ways to delay, divide, and reduce taxes and settlement costs. But he or she will not be there at the funeral with a check to cover those obligations.
Your banker? There is really only one thing they want in the end. To get their money back with interest.
What you need is a life insurance agent who will work with you to sort it all out now and be there with a cashier’s check in the end.
Naturally they get paid. They receive a commission when you take action – a tiny % of the amount of money set aside by the insurance company to be paid immediately at death.
Everybody else – well the bank gets its money back no matter what.
Your other advisors will have invoices at the funeral whether their ideas were good or not, whether you did what they recommended or not, and whether the laws in effect then are the same as they are now, or not.
You know from experience, watching what has happened to your neighbors and association members, that there is a direct correlation between long term planning and the likelihood of your family retaining the success everyone has sacrificed to achieve.
I bet you know farm insurance agents who spend countless hours talking with your contemporaries about the importance of looking down the road 5, 10, 15, or more years into the future – in order to make clear the importance of acting now to protect what’s already been created.
The biggest mistake you can make is not listening to them, and continuing to treat their advice and the need for long term planning lightly.
Seriously, does it make sense to spend your life building a successful enterprise but fail to invest a few hours and a relatively small amount of money in planning its orderly continuation when you leave.
And you will leave, one way or another – make no mistake about it.
Here is an important article Farm Insurance Agents, Your Long Term Planning Partners
Recommended Reading
- Family Farm Succession Planning
- Who in The World Requires a Farm Succession Planning Consultant?
- Are You Someone Who Thinks They Need a Farm Succession Planning Expert and Precisely Why or Why Not?
- Are You Someone Who Requires a Farm Succession Planning Specialist?
- Farm Succession and Strategic Planning Group
