It’s a plan for who takes over your business when you retire, become incapacitated, or pass away. Start as soon as your business has real value, rather than waiting until a crisis hits and leaves your family and employees without direction.

Common tools include a trust, a buy-sell agreement, or a specific gift in your estate plan. Without one, your business becomes part of your general estate and may pass under default inheritance rules instead of your wishes.

It passes through intestate succession, a court-supervised process that distributes it by a fixed legal formula, which may not match what you’d have wanted. That usually means more delay and cost than if you’d had a plan in place.

Not required, but a trust lets your business skip probate and transfer directly to the successor you choose. That can prevent disruption and delays in running the business after your death.

A will goes through probate court before anything transfers, while a trust generally avoids probate and can pass assets on right away. For a business, that difference can mean months or even years of delay.