Farm succession

Handing over a farm is rarely a single moment. It usually stretches over years, with the older generation still at work, a successor slowly taking on more, and brothers and sisters watching from a distance. Because the farm is at once the family’s home, its livelihood and most of what it owns, the questions are as personal as they are legal — and when they are left unanswered, a death or an illness answers them instead, often in a way nobody intended and the farm cannot afford.

A workable succession has to keep the business in one piece for the person who carries it on, remain fair to those who do not, and leave the outgoing generation secure. It reaches into family, property and tax, and into every contract the farm depends on:

• the rules on the ways a farm can pass during your lifetime — sale, gift, lease of the business, or gradual entry as a partner;
• the rules on valuing land, buildings, livestock and machinery for the handover, and on settling disagreements over that value;
• the rules on the share of an estate the law may reserve for each child, and on fair compensation for the children who do not farm;
• the rules on what happens to the farm when there is no plan — co-ownership between heirs, and claims to divide or sell;
• the rules on wills, marriage contracts and agreements between heirs that keep the farm together;
• the rules on the tax a transfer triggers, and on the reliefs that may apply to a business that carries on;
• the rules on whether leased land, permits, delivery rights and payment entitlements pass to the successor with the business;
• the rules on the outgoing generation’s income, housing and right to remain on the farm after the handover.

Our lawyers can support you with this.