Private Client & NRI Advisory
Family Business Structuring
Structures that let a family's business and wealth pass to the next generation without a dispute doing the deciding — holding structures, trusts, arrangements and the documents that make them hold.
Family wealth usually breaks at a transition: a founder's exit, a death without a settled will, children with different appetites for the business. The structures that prevent the break are ordinary and well-tested — a holding company above the operating businesses, a private family trust for assets that should not fragment, a written family arrangement where the understanding already exists but the paper does not — but each carries tax, stamp-duty and regulatory consequences that differ by asset and by state.
Our work in this area begins with the family's actual map: who owns what, under which documents, with what happens on each death or exit. Structures are then chosen for the family's facts — not sold as products — and the tax position of every transfer (gifts between relatives, settlement on trust, reorganisation of shareholding) is settled and documented as the structure is built.
What this covers
- Ownership mapping: shares, property, loans and guarantees as they actually stand, against how the family believes they stand
- Holding-company structures above operating businesses, with the dividend and control consequences worked through
- Private family trusts: settlement, trusteeship, beneficiaries and the tax treatment of contributions and distributions
- Family arrangements and settlements, documented and, where needed, registered
- Succession documents aligned to the structure — wills that match the shareholding, nominations that match the wills
- Exit and separation mechanics for family members leaving the business, with valuation and tax settled upfront
How the engagement runs
01
The family map
Ownership, documents and intentions are recorded in one place — including the gaps between the record and the family's understanding.
02
Options on paper
The realistic structures are set out side by side with their tax, stamp-duty, control and cost consequences.
03
Build
The chosen structure is executed: transfers, trust deed, arrangement, revised wills — each document consistent with the others.
04
Keep it true
Nominees, registers and accounts are aligned to the new structure, and the map is reviewed when the family or the law changes.
Questions clients ask
Does a family trust actually protect assets and save tax?
A trust is a governance and succession tool first: it keeps assets from fragmenting across heirs and sets rules for management and distribution. Its tax treatment depends on how it is settled and how income is distributed — a determinate private trust is taxed largely as its beneficiaries would be. Anyone selling a trust primarily as a tax shelter is skipping the analysis that decides whether it fits your family at all.
We have an understanding in the family but nothing written. Is that enough?
It is how most disputes start. A family arrangement records the understanding while everyone agrees; registered and stamped properly, it is the document a court or a registrar will respect later. The cost of writing it during agreement is a small fraction of contesting its absence.
How does this connect with a future IPO or sale of the business?
Buyers and exchanges diligence the cap table and the promoter family's holdings. Unsettled successions, informal loans and shares held in names that no longer match the family's reality are exactly the findings that delay or discount a transaction. Structuring early is what makes the diligence short.
Discuss Your Requirements With CorpCFO
Share the matter in confidence. You will hear back from the practice — not a call centre — with a clear view of the options and the next step.