FOR BUSINESS OWNERS
The business and the estate belong in the same conversation.
We advise owners of closely held companies who want to protect what they have built, provide well for their families, and prepare thoughtfully for transition.
BUILT FOR THE OWNER’S REALITY
A successful enterprise changes the questions.
The business may support your family, employ people you care about, hold much of your wealth, and carry your name. Yet the agreements governing it, the estate plan protecting it, and the arrangements for its future are often prepared at different times by different advisors.
The result may look complete on paper while leaving essential questions unanswered.
THE QUESTIONS THAT MATTER
Who can lead and make decisions if you cannot?
Will your family have liquidity without being forced to sell?
Do the ownership documents and estate plan agree?
What happens when a partner dies, leaves, or wants out?
Can the next generation inherit without inheriting conflict?
Is the plan suitable for the business as it exists today?
THE BUSINESS-OWNER PLANNING DIAGNOSTIC
Before documents, a clear view of the whole.
The diagnostic is a paid advisory engagement—not a disguised sales consultation. It is designed to give an owner a useful answer even if no further work follows.
01 / Understand
A private working session devoted to the business, the family, the existing plans, and the event that brought the questions into focus.
02 / Examine
A coordinated review of ownership, control, incapacity, transfer, liquidity, tax exposure, and the documents already in place.
03 / Clarify
A written roadmap identifying what is sound, what is missing, what deserves attention first, and which advisors should be involved.
YOUR TANGIBLE RESULT
A roadmap worthy of the decisions ahead.
You leave the diagnostic with a written planning roadmap: an ordered account of the principal risks, unresolved decisions, recommended legal work, and the other professional disciplines the plan may require.
Planning roadmap
Ownership and governance
Death and incapacity
Family security and liquidity
Succession and transition
Priorities and next decisions
Prepared for the owner—not pulled from a template.
WHOM WE SERVE
For owners whose lives and wealth are closely tied to the enterprise.
Our work is particularly suited to founders and owners of established, privately held companies who remain materially involved in the business and want the family, the wealth, and the enterprise considered together.
Clients often come to us after a health concern, a death among their peers, an approaching exit, a significant change in value, or the realization that documents prepared years ago no longer reflect the life they have built.
THE WORK THAT MAY FOLLOW
Advice shaped around the plan—not the other way around.
Estate and incapacity planning
Wills, trusts, powers of attorney, tax planning, and governance tailored to closely held interests and the people entrusted to make important decisions.
Entity and ownership planning
Formation, restructuring, governing agreements, buy-sell arrangements, and protective structures suited to growing and established enterprises.
Succession and transition counsel
Careful preparation for death, incapacity, family succession, a partner’s departure, an internal sale, or an eventual third-party exit.
Business transactions
Measured, practical advice for acquisitions, sales, reorganizations, and the agreements that allow an enterprise to move forward with confidence.
A CLOSELY HELD RELATIONSHIP
“The value of counsel is not measured by the number of documents produced, but by the quality of the decisions they preserve.”
Thomson Law Firm works personally and deliberately. We listen before prescribing, coordinate with the client’s other advisors when appropriate, and remain attentive to the practical realities behind every legal decision.
A PRIVATE CONSULTATION
Begin with a considered conversation.
Tell us what has changed, what matters most, and what you would like the future to hold.