DOne — Death
The unthinkable, planned for in advance.
You are in the middle of an intersection and the unthinkable happens. What do you want your family, management team, and ownership group to know?
- What happens to the loans? To the personal guarantees?
- Are the beneficiaries on every asset and policy current?
- Who should the family call first — for the business, for the estate, for the lawyer?
- Is there a documented plan? Or is everything in your head?
When an owner dies unexpectedly, the business often suffers materially in the years that follow — reduced revenue, employment declines, and a meaningfully elevated risk of failure. Most of those losses are preventable with a plan that exists before the event.
The plan addresses
Buy-sell agreement (current, executed, funded), life insurance funding the buy-sell, estate plan integrated with the business, a written contingency letter, and reviewed beneficiary designations across every account and policy.
DTwo — Disability
The owner who cannot work, indefinitely.
You have a stroke and cannot talk or write. Does your family know where your important papers are? Does anyone have the passwords to pay bills, contact customers, run payroll?
- Is your power of attorney current — financial and medical?
- Will this event invoke a buyout of your shares? How is it paid?
- Does the business have key-person disability coverage, or just life?
- Who has signing authority while you are recovering?
The plan addresses
Disability insurance (income replacement and key-person), powers of attorney, a contingency letter, a key-employee retention plan with stay bonuses, and a password / operational continuity protocol that lives outside the owner's head.
DThree — Divorce
The marriage that ends — even amicably.
Your spouse tells you the marriage is over. The conversation can be civil and the financial implications can still be substantial.
- How will your shares of the business be valued in a divorce?
- Is there a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement?
- How do changes in your finances affect the company's cash needs?
- What are your options for unbundling personal financial affairs without harming the business itself?
The plan addresses
Prenuptial or postnuptial agreement where applicable, a current independent valuation, a buy-sell with a divorce trigger, and separate-property structures used appropriately.
DFour — Disagreement
The partners who no longer agree.
Multiple partners rarely prepare for the day they no longer want to co-own a business. Like every relationship, business partnerships sometimes end. The mechanism for ending them needs to exist before it is needed.
- How will each partner's interest be valued?
- How will it be paid — cash, installments, seller note?
- What happens to operational control during the transition?
- Is there a mediation clause to keep the disagreement out of court?
The plan addresses
Shareholder agreement with mandatory buyout terms, an independent valuation mechanism, a mediation clause before litigation, and operational-control provisions for the buyout window.
DFive — Distress
External events you cannot predict and cannot control.
The pandemic taught everyone that "this could not happen here" is not a strategy. Cyber events, supply-chain disruption, property disasters, workplace incidents, customer bankruptcies, major lawsuits — every business owner is one bad week away from one of these.
The plan addresses
Business interruption insurance, cyber insurance, backup supplier relationships, a documented continuity plan, working-capital reserves sized for two-to-three months of downside, and a crisis communications template.