Key points
- Mediation can be used as a lifetime estate and business succession planning process to avoid a dispute following a monumental event.
- Planning involves specialist tax knowledge so participants should agree to the joint appointment of a single adviser to provide an ‘estate planning report’.
- Mediation can be linked to the use of family investment companies.
- In contrast to litigation a participant can use their voice and be heard during a mediation.
Having discussed how mediation works in the first part of this article ‘Back to the future: 1’ (Taxation 3 March 2022 page 13) I will in this second article explain how mediation – or facilitated lifetime planning – can also be used as a lifetime estate and business succession planning process.
If an international business family does not know how to start an inter-family discussion about how to put their house in...