Need legal advice on what happens if I or my business partner dies.

elsien

Elliott.T123 said:

I have no legal knowledge here I am just throwing ideas out there that you can look into.

Personally I would be looking to see if there was a way that if one of you were to die the other person inherits control but that the deceased persons spouse still inherits their financial share.

If it were a Ltd Co I would say could you pass on class B shares so that the surviving individual maintains the business decisions until it is wound down or sold but the spouse still gets 50%.

Alternatively could you pass 49% to a spouse and 1% to the business partner so they are able to get things closed down / sold easily? 

51%?      .

peb

And if course if you and your wife are in the same car crash?  You need proper legal advice, if you don't know a solicitor ask for recommendations maybe otherwise use the law society find a solicitor tool to find the right area both geographically and in law

TBagpuss

Do you have a formal partnership agreement / partnership feed? Or is the business a limited compnay? Those things will make a difference. And if you are partners but don't have any find offormal partnership agreement then i one of you died, it's entirely possible that thei share ofthe business would pass automatically to the other by way of survivorsip.

In our partnership agreement, we have specifc provision about this - we all provdise a limited power of attorny to let the other partners continue to run the busness if one of us is incapacitated or bsent, and the priovisions on death are siilar to those in relation to retuirement in tht the retiring partner / estate of a dead partner gets paid out but on a set timetable, not in a single lump sum. I imagine it would be possible to build in a provision forthe business to be sold in the event of the detah, retirement or permanent incacity of either partner, with the survivor having the optionto buy at open market value.

You probably want to tak to a solicior sealing with compnay and commercial law, and may also want to look into whjther the partnership oought to be looking into some form of key personael insurance / life inurance - of one of you fell under a bus, what would be the short term plan ? Would you / could you hire a locum to cover that person's role until the business could be sold or wond up?