January 9, 2014. A brief blurb; more to come later. When you live in a significant agrarian community, as we do, the recurring worry that continually lingers over the aging farmer is the future of the family farm after their passing. It requires little empathy or far-reaching perspective to understand why this is so. Century farms are not uncommon. Without fully sketching the analog, the attachment resembles an owner’s concerns for their family business. And the owner wants to know, what next?
For the farmer, they have more control over that question than they might think, as long as they engage the planning process. There is a great deal of flexibility in creating a plan either by using the standard trust arrangements or evolving the family farm into a business. While, as always, particulars and circumstances differ, either option helps grant peace of mind in passing the farm on to the next generation. Either method can also help shield the farm from future creditors of the children. These also help form a balance between the child or children that will or are active in farming and those that are not. It can help treat them more equitable, such that the farming child harvests some additional value for the sweat he puts into the land, while the remaining children receive some other income or residual benefit for being beneficial owners of the farm property.
Visit our Goosmann Trust Law Counsel website for more information, email info@goosmannlaw.com or call 712.226.4000.