A fixed-fee first engagement. You'll know exactly what you have before you decide anything.
No retainer and no commitment to anything after it. Some families take the map to their own attorney and CPA and never need us again. That's a fine outcome.
Shown here with the composite family from our case story. Yours is built from your documents and belongs to you.
The Map shows where your structure breaks. The stress test puts numbers on it. For each event, we model the tax and the cash for every shareholder or beneficiary: who owes what, who has to come up with money, and who ends up in control.
Most family agreements get rewritten more than once, usually after something has already gone wrong: a buy-sell with a price from fifteen years ago, a trust with no cash to pay the estate tax, an owner who can't afford to buy out a partner. Fixing that on paper now costs far less than fixing it after a death, a divorce, or a dispute.
Before we model anything, we check two things most plans take for granted: each owner's basis, and how money moving between your entities has been recorded. A loan booked as a distribution, or basis nobody has tracked in years, changes every number that follows.
Your attorney still decides whether the documents are legally sound. We make sure they have the full picture before they draft.
Two siblings each own half of a family company worth about $10 million. One is ready to step back and be bought out. Everything looks settled until someone runs the numbers.
Composite example. Figures are illustrative, not a guarantee of results. Assumes an Illinois S corporation and a complete redemption of the retiring owner's shares treated as a sale. Tax on the $400,000 of missing basis: 20% federal long-term capital gains ($80,000), 3.8% net investment income tax ($15,200), and 4.95% Illinois income tax ($19,800), before other deductions or credits.
*Exemptions from the 3.8% net investment income tax may apply, for example to owners who materially participate in the business. If so, the avoidable tax in this example would be about $100,000.
You should, for the drafting. Your attorney can tell you whether your documents are legally sound. We test whether they work with the business, the tax returns, the insurance, and the bank, under the events that actually happen. Then your attorney gets a clear list of what to change.
Nothing, unless you want it to. Some families take the map to their own advisors and never need us again. Others ask us to stay on and coordinate the changes. On the business side, our team can also do the work directly through Golden Tree Tax & Accounting: entity changes, owner pay, returns, and books. If you already have a CPA you're happy with, that work stays with them.
Bring what you have: the documents, the questions, or just the feeling that nobody's explained it. We'll tell you plainly whether a map would help.