Family Transitions

Foreign hello, campground owners. I want to talk to you a moment about family transitions. If you are in a situation where you hope to have family members take over your campground at some point in the future, I want you to make sure you've got some good planning in place. My colleague Amy Wertz is an attorney who helps with family transitions. So I highly recommend that you talk to somebody who specializes in that. There can be a lot more to this than just the working out of the agreement. Families have a lot of specialty areas and a lot of help that's needed in the transition. We want to make sure that your family relationship does not suffer in any way, which often happens in business transitions. When you're looking at a transition with a family member, the first thing I recommend is that you're going to have to have a wide open and honest conversation with yourself, your spouse, if that is the case, and with whoever you think may want to take over the campground. A lot of times I've seen assumptions made about what a sibling or a child would like to happen in the transition. You may have difference of opinion on how that workout and the dollar buyout happens. So take some time. Learn what each of you needs from the deal and what your wants are, and make sure that you have some plans in place. The worst thing that you can do here is sit back and hope that everything turns out okay. Make sure that you have some open lines of communication that you're jotting down, some ideas of what you think you would like to happen. Each of you do that and bring those ideas to the table and talk about it. I've seen a lot of situations as well where the children are ready to get the parents out of the way. And in those cases, think about to yourself what you would like. Would you like more free time to exit the business on a gradual basis, or do you need that constant involvement? Also, the other big stumbling block as you transition ownership is learning who the boss is. When you transition out to family members, you have to be willing to hand over that component that says I'm the boss. Sometimes you'll have to watch others make mistakes that you may have already made yourself. And that is very difficult and can cause some heartburn along the way. So have a go at it. Look at what your situation is. Don't be afraid to involve some experts who can help with that family transition and make sure that from an accounting and financial perspective, you have a plan. There will be tax consequences in this change, so make sure that you all understand those changes. And I hope that you have a nice smooth transition. If we can help in any way, please don't hesitate to reach out. I am Donna Bordeaux, CPA@campgroundaccounting.com Please subscribe to our YouTube page, follow us on Facebook as well as our blog@campgroundaccounting.com thank you. SA.