I first set out to be an estate planning attorney.  However, not too long after making that decision I realized that I needed to be conversant in my client's business planning concerns as well.  If I wasn't, i could not effectively plan their estates.

That was brought home to me again recently with a client I had served years ago for business planning came into my office again.   Sometime in the last ten years, the client had transferred half of the LLC that ran his business to his mother.  I'm not sure why.  I think it may have been an attempt at asset protection planning.

Problem was, nobody did any estate planning for the mother.  As a result, when mother died my client found that the client's brother was now a minority owner of the business, having inherited half of mom's interest in the business.  Mom had never played a role in the business, but client didn't mind sharing profits with his mother.  He did mind sharing them with his brother.

Having Mom do even a fairly basic will would have been much cleaner and cheaper than what it's going to take to clean this up.