Buy-Sell Agreements

Chapter 14

For Professional Advisors  

You may be wondering why a book that I wrote for the layperson on buy-sell agreements would include a chapter written expressly for professional advisors. I decided to do this because there are many points of consideration in putting together or even reviewing and revising a buy-sell agreement that are technical and thus best suited for the professional advisor. I felt that I had to give my thoughts on those points.

I also wanted to demonstrate to professional advisors how using this book for clients can make their jobs easier in putting together and advising on what is, without any doubt in my mind, the hardest entity document to get right. Moreover, perhaps the professional advisors aren’t as up on buy-sell agreements as they need to be to assist their clients with these agreements or may just need a good review of some hot-button issues to watch out for and avoid. I wanted to give professional advisors the benefit of my thoughts that are derived from more than thirty years of experience working with, reviewing, crafting, and even making mistakes on buy-sell agreements.

I believe that even a seasoned advisor could benefit from reading this book, as it is full of practical tips that I’ve learned over the years, sometimes by making the same mistakes I chronicle here. I will not repeat all the useful tips in this chapter. However, if I had to select only two chapters that a professional advisor should read before assisting a client with a buy-sell agreement, it would be this chapter and chapter 9. They address some of the common errors that professional advisors and clients make in putting together buy-sell agreements and serve as an excellent reminder of which areas to focus on avoiding.