Mary Molloy Solicitors has an office at 2 Rose Inn Street in Kilkenny city centre, open Monday to Friday with same-week appointments generally available — and a substantial estates practice alongside the transactional work, which matters more on a business sale than most sellers expect.
Two Problems, One Conversation
A large share of Irish business sales are retirement exits, and those sellers have a transaction to complete and, immediately afterwards, a completely different estate to plan for. The sale converts an illiquid trading company into a substantial liquid asset. A will drafted when the main asset was the business frequently makes no sense once the business is gone — it may leave shares that no longer exist to a particular child, and provision that seemed balanced when one child worked in the business and others did not may not survive the change. The practical accessibility of the estate changes too: an illiquid company was hard to divide, cash is easy, and that removes an old constraint while introducing fresh questions about what is fair. Richard O’Shea is a TEP of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners, so those questions get raised while the deal is running and can still be planned around, rather than in a separate conversation two years after the money has landed.
Family Transfers and Management Buyouts
In a regional business base a good many sales are to a son or daughter, or to the people who have been running the business. That removes the hardest part of a sale and introduces three problems arm’s-length deals do not have. Funding, because a family member or management team rarely has the money outright, so the price is met through borrowing, through the business over time, or through deferred consideration — which makes the seller a creditor of a business they no longer control and in need of security rather than goodwill. Documentation, which everyone wants to skip precisely because the parties trust each other, and which matters most for that reason: the deal outlives the current goodwill. And fairness between children, where the business was the intended inheritance of the one who works in it — a question best answered at the same time as the transfer rather than left to a will nobody has revisited. Each side needs their own solicitor; a firm cannot act for both.
Two Free Tools Before You Call
The Sale Structure Check walks the asset-versus-share question and what follows from each. The Readiness Check produces a gap list ordered by what will delay the deal or reduce the price. Both run on your own device — nothing stored, and neither is tax advice.
Selling, Buying, or Still Deciding?
What is being sold, whether an accountant has advised on structure, what is signed already, and whether there are employees and a lease. Conflicts are checked first, so name every party in your first email.
Call 01 5827148