Family Owned Businesses

Our firm specializes in intergenerational transfers of family businesses. An important legal tool to protect a family business’s competitive edge and preserve relationships among family members is the formulation of a family constitution.

A family business is a business controlled by a single family where parents, children, and often grandchildren, and sons- and daughters-in-law fill senior positions and are members of the decision-making nexus. Usually, the founder is the dominant and deciding figure who is often the head of the family, though it can also be one of the children.

Like other businesses, a family-owned enterprise may be either small, employing primarily family members (e.g. a grocery store or a law firm) or large, employing hundreds or even thousands, only a few of whom are relatives.

Our firm provides legal advice to family businesses and finds creative solutions to prevent family feuds. Unlike business conflicts among partners, feuds in family businesses involve special factors that must be considered when one tries to formulate resolutions.

Moreover, the court authorized to deal with conflict in a family business is Family Court. Therefore, we recommend consulting an attorney specializing in family law when you must deal with a dispute in a family business.

The effort of working through disputes over a family’s property in a court of law and resolving family feuds through negotiations and mediation is essentially different from handling commercial business conflicts, because of the involvement of ill-will among family members in the former. Therefore, experience in the field can be extremely helping in finding legal responses suited to the resolution of this type of conflict.