Family Farm & Business Planning
At Dolan & Associates, we’ve found that keeping a farm, ranch or small business in the family requires unique, targeted strategies. You can’t follow the same approach as someone who has just “investments” to pass on. Estate planning is critically important for preserving and passing on family farms, ranches, and small businesses in communities like ours. Farm, ranch and small business estate planning must be adapted to fit specific family situations.
Whether you like it or not, eventually you are leaving your farm, ranch, or small business… Either standing up, or laying down. Without an effective plan for the transition of your operations, it is unlikely that what you have built or maintained over your lifetime will survive into the next generation.
Mike is a regular columnist for Western Farmer Stockman – FarmPress (previously Western Farmer Stockman)
Most people think of estate planning as writing documents to say who gets what when they die. We could, perhaps, call the documents an estate plan, but creating those documents is not estate planning. Estate planning is a complex series of actions, changes, or functions bringing about a result – much like farming, ranching and a successful small business! Dolan & Associates has a unique approach to estate planning that includes working together to create a meaningful plan, to align your estate WITH your plan, and to commit together to the routine maintenance required to keep your estate plan updated.
Finally, even after the estate is formally “settled,” your planning may continue! If your goals included asset protection, long-range tax avoidance, or a heritage that lasts for generations, your heirs will continue developing, enhancing and living out that plan for decades or generations to come! If you transfer your vision to them, they will keep building on it.
Estate planning is no minor project. Meaningful results come from a systematic process!
Where To Begin
To see if an attorney can help design a plan to fit your particular circumstances, ask some questions:
- What percentage of your business is devoted to estate planning for farmers, ranchers, and small business owners?
- How have you seen those plans play out completely and work well?
- How will you assure that my plan stays current with the law?
If you begin now to ask the right questions, you will be able to develop the right plan for your family and to assure that what you have goes to whom you want, when and the way you want, transferring your traditions—not just your net worth.
At Dolan & Associates, we have been working with farmers, ranchers, and small business owners along the Front Range area since 1989. We have worked with these families for the past three decades to help them secure their traditions, manage estate and income tax liabilities, review estate size based on land prices, and other business valuation specific issues that can impact the future of the family’s generational investment.
This is how Dolan & Associates responds to the questions above:
At Dolan & Associates, 30 percent of our business is devoted to estate planning for farmers, ranchers, and small business owners.
We have seen numerous Empowered Estate Plans™ play out for families and the successful outcomes they have produced. Many have held up even in dramatically changed circumstances that would have resulted in years of litigation with a basic estate planning model. There is nothing more exciting than seeing a farm, ranch, or small business thrive in the hands of the next generation.
Mr. Dolan stays abreast of the latest planning techniques by working with his colleagues on the Advanced Planning Integration Co-Development Team of the National Network of Estate Planning Attorneys to determine what techniques other legal professionals may have developed or implemented. He also consistently works with those colleagues to develop and implement creative techniques that other legal professionals may not recognize as opportunities. Mr. Dolan, as part of the educational team, then teaches these techniques to the membership of the National Network while bringing those techniques and strategies to fruition for his clients through the Empowered Estate Planning™ process.
