Business Succession
The business can outlive you. That part is a decision.
You built something worth passing on. But ownership, control and inheritance do not organise themselves, and the default outcomes, in both frameworks, are rarely the ones you would choose. Succession is planned now, or it is improvised later by people who are grieving.
The blind spot
The asset your will forgets
For most business owners, the business is the largest thing they own, and the least planned-for. The will, if there is one, mentions the house and the savings. The company sits in a different mental drawer, as if it will somehow look after itself.
It will not. Shares pass on death like any other property, under your will or under intestacy rules that follow neither your wishes nor the Faraid. The will, the partnership agreement and the company articles were each written separately. On the day it matters, they all speak at once.
- The will that ignores the business, or contradicts the shareholders’ agreement it has never met.
- The partnership that dies with the partner: dissolution by default, at the worst possible moment.
- The articles nobody has read since incorporation: transmission provisions written by a template, not by you.
- The family who inherit a question: ownership without control, value without liquidity, grief with paperwork.
The shape of a plan
Three questions every succession plan must answer
-
Who owns it?
How your interest passes, to whom, in what shares, honouring the Faraid, and how that instruction is written so the will, the articles and any shareholders’ agreement say the same thing instead of fighting each other.
-
Who runs it?
Ownership and management are different inheritances. A plan names who takes decisions from the first morning, whether a successor, the existing team or an interim arrangement, so the business does not drift while the estate is administered.
-
Where does the money come from?
If some heirs are to be bought out, or the business must pay out value without being sold, the cash has to come from somewhere. Cross-option arrangements, insurance funding and staged buy-outs exist for exactly this, and they only work if set up in advance.
The hard problem
Faraid deals in fractions. A business doesn’t divide like one.
What the Faraid requires
Fixed shares · Every heir counted
The Islamic law of inheritance allocates the estate in defined shares among defined heirs. Applied to a shareholding, arithmetic is the easy part: a competent scholar can state each heir’s fraction precisely.
The hard part is what the fractions mean in practice: a company run by one son but owned in ninths; a daughter’s share locked in a business that pays no dividends; heirs abroad holding stakes in a firm they will never enter. The shares are right; the situation is still unjust unless someone designs for it.
What the company machinery offers
Wasiyya · Options · Valuation · Buy-outs
English company and succession law supplies the tools the fractions need: a well-drafted will that respects the Faraid; articles and agreements that govern how shares transmit; cross-options letting continuing owners buy the deceased’s interest at a fair, pre-agreed valuation; funding so heirs are paid in money rather than deadlock.
Used together, the heirs receive their rightful value, the business keeps a working ownership structure, and neither comes at the other’s expense.
This is the most cross-disciplinary work we do: scholars on the shares, advisers on the structure, the will and company documents drafted in one exercise. Where regulated legal services are required, these are provided by our partner SRA-regulated law firm. Inheritance tax also belongs in the room: the reliefs for business property changed in April 2026, and the numbers should be run with your accountant or tax adviser as part of the same plan.
How we help
One plan, all documents pointing the same way
We start from the whole picture: the business and its documents, the family and its expectations, the estate and its shape. Then the plan is built in the right order: the Faraid position established, the ownership and management answers decided with you, the funding designed. Only then does drafting begin, so every document implements the same plan rather than its own.
Succession touches people as much as paper. Where the family needs the plan explained, or needs to air a disagreement before it hardens, we do that too, with mediation available if a dispute already exists.
- The audit. What your current will, articles and agreements would do tomorrow. Most owners are surprised.
- The design. Ownership, management and liquidity answered together, honouring the Faraid.
- The drafting. Will and company documents aligned, via the partner firm where regulated work is required.
- The explanation. The people affected hear the plan from you, with us in the room if that helps.
Common questions
What owners ask us
Can company shares simply be divided according to the Faraid?
They can be, and sometimes that is the right answer. But fragmented ownership of a trading company often serves nobody: minority heirs hold paper they cannot sell, and the one running the business answers to a committee of relatives. The alternative is to honour the Faraid in value rather than in fragments, heirs bought out fairly under a pre-agreed mechanism, which requires planning while the owner is alive.
What if my heirs don’t want to run the business?
Then the plan should say so. A managed sale, a buy-out by partners or management, or continuing family ownership with professional management are all legitimate outcomes. What is not legitimate is silence: leaving the question to be answered in the weeks after a funeral, when every option is worse.
Is my personal will enough on its own?
Almost never, if you own a business. A will speaks only for you; your shares also answer to the company’s articles and any shareholders’ or partnership agreement, and where the documents conflict, the will can lose. A proper plan reads them together and amends whichever is out of line. For the personal side, see Wills & Inheritance · Faraid.
Does inheritance tax change the plan?
It shapes it, and the rules for business property changed in April 2026, which makes old assumptions unsafe. We do not give tax advice; we design the succession plan alongside your accountant or tax adviser so the Faraid, the company documents and the tax position are solved as one problem, not three.
Related services
Book a consultation
Decide it while it’s still your decision.
A confidential conversation about the business, the family and the handover, long before anyone needs it to have happened.
Or call 020 3930 1088