Legal Resource Guide

wills anD esTaTes Don���TToo waiT UnTil iT���s laTe PeoPle shouldn���t Put oFF their estate Planning until theY���re conFronted with their own mortalitY. good Planning means less striFe down the road. BY michael mcKiernan h ospitals across the nation are doubling as succession and estate planning hubs, say advisers in the field. It���s because people are often waiting until they���re sick to address their estates, says Clay Hudson. Hudson, who practises wills and estates law with Shibley Righton LLP, says clients are more likely to get down to the business of discussing the future of their assets and interests after a confrontation with their own mortality. ���A lot of people don���t want to think about death,��� he says. ���It���s not part of their agenda, and they don���t want to deal with it. In our office, we have a lot of lawyers here doing wills for people, and they all tend to be people in crisis. They wait until they���re quite sick until they do this.��� The situation is similar in Canadian family-operated businesses, according to Larry Klar of private equity firm Argosy 12 Partners Ltd. He���s managing partner of the succession fund, which invests in owner-operated companies to help them get through a transition in ownership or to plan for future succession. Klar says clients are often seeking liquidity for a buyout of reluctant partners who want to exit the business for a variety of reasons. That includes long-time operators who have had enough or less active partners looking to cash out their shares. ���This can happen because someone is sick, tired, going through divorce, or really any life-changing circumstance that affects their need for liquidity, which inevitably is going to affect the business,��� says Klar. He says that kind of reactive succession planning is a recipe for intensified strife between family members. ���Conflict is always going to arise when people have different agendas.��� He prefers to get on board with a company long before crisis

• Cover