The Overlooked Risk in Estate Planning: Your Business Partner
Estate planning isn’t just about documents and heirs. For business owners, it’s about ensuring that your company—and your relationships—can survive the unexpected.
In the latest episode of From Busy to Rich, Justin Lakin and Wes Young take us inside a type of conversation many advisors skip: what happens to a business when one partner dies? The answer could be the difference between continuity and chaos.
The Real-Life Fallout of Not Planning
Wes opens the episode with stories from the field. Two business owners with no buy-sell agreement. One passes away. Suddenly the surviving partner is negotiating distributions with the deceased owner’s spouse—or worse, their new spouse.
From personal guarantees on loans to unexpected family involvement in company operations, the stories are cautionary tales of what happens when planning is left to chance.
From Tension to Clarity
Rather than making clients feel overwhelmed, Wes and Justin offer a repeatable structure for tackling these conversations inside their Direction Phase framework. This includes:
- Creating clarity around business ownership transitions
- Discussing key person insurance and its role in continuity
- Understanding the emotional and financial realities of a surviving spouse
They also differentiate between mandatory and optional buy-sell agreements and walk through how real estate holdings tied to the business should be handled differently than operating entities.
The Heritage Angle Most Advisors Miss
Beyond technical tools, this episode zooms out to explore how business planning becomes part of a family’s heritage. Wes explains how to use quarterly business retreats, vision documents, and even screen recordings to capture not just strategy but legacy.
These tools give clients a way to speak their values, show their leadership philosophy, and invite their heirs or partners into that journey before a crisis occurs.
As Justin says in the episode, “You don’t wait for clarity. You create it.”
Why This Episode Matters
Too many advisors avoid hard conversations about death and business succession. But those who lean into these moments build unmatched trust and long-term impact.
If your clients own businesses and you want to help them protect both the people and the companies they care about, this episode is for you.
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