As arbitrator as well as insurance adviser, you can help foster the dialogue and action needed to create or improve a family's business succession plan. Here, especially, you should monitor the client's changing circumstances — business as well as family — to make sure the plan remains "ideal." An annual review is not just recommended, but absolutely necessary. By regularly engaging the family in a discussion of their succession plans, you can help clients break down potential barriers to addressing critical issues like "who" and "when."

Of course, advisers are reminded that the practice of law and accounting, both of which are involved in full-scale business succession planning, is restricted to those who are properly licensed to do so. Family business succession planning requires an estate team approach as much if not more than with any other estate planning situation. As with general estate planning, your role as "financial quarterback" can involve pulling together and managing the team's activity.

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