Personal Documents a Georgia Business Owner Needs
Your personal estate plan is the foundation. These documents control what happens to you and your assets when you die or cannot make decisions. Without them, your family and your business go to court.
Revocable Living Trust
A revocable living trust is the document that keeps your estate out of probate. You transfer your assets, including your business interest, into the trust. When you die, the successor trustee you named distributes those assets according to your instructions, without a court proceeding.
Without a trust, your business interest goes through Georgia probate, which takes 9 to 18 months on standard estates and up to 30 months on complex ones. During that window, no one can manage, sell, or refinance the business without court approval.
Included in The Hive Law flat fee: Yes. The revocable living trust is included in the $4,000 flat-fee personal package.
Pour-Over Will
A pour-over will is a backup document. If you own any asset that was never transferred into your trust, a bank account you opened last year or a piece of equipment you bought last month, the pour-over will captures it and directs it into the trust at your death.
Without a pour-over will, assets left outside the trust go through intestate succession under Georgia law. That means the state decides who gets them, not you.
Included in The Hive Law flat fee: Yes. Included in the $4,000 package.
Financial Durable Power of Attorney
A financial durable power of attorney names someone to manage your finances if you are incapacitated. For a business owner, this document must explicitly authorize your agent to manage business accounts, sign contracts, make payroll, and conduct LLC transactions.
A generic POA that does not include business authority is not enough. If you are hospitalized and your POA does not authorize business actions, no one has legal authority to operate your business, not your spouse, not your business partner.
Georgia courts have seen this play out in 72-hour emergency windows: a hospitalized owner, a business that cannot make payroll, and no one with clear authority to act.
Included in The Hive Law flat fee: Yes. Included in the $4,000 package.
Healthcare Directive and HIPAA Authorization
A healthcare directive (also called an advance directive in Georgia) tells your doctors what care you want if you cannot speak for yourself. The HIPAA authorization allows your named agent to access your medical records and communicate with your care team.
Without both documents together, your family may not be able to get information about your condition, even in an emergency.
Included in The Hive Law flat fee: Yes. Both included in the $4,000 package.
Deed Transfer for One Property
If you own real estate, that property must be transferred into your trust to avoid probate. The Hive Law prepares the deed transfer for one property as part of the flat-fee package.
Note: Georgia’s Transfer on Death deed (effective July 1, 2024) allows real property to transfer outside probate. But it does not apply to LLC membership interests. Your business interest still requires a trust assignment or an operating agreement provision to avoid probate.
Included in The Hive Law flat fee: Yes. One property deed transfer included in the $4,000 package. Additional properties priced separately.
Business Documents a Georgia Business Owner Needs
Personal documents protect you and your family. Business documents protect your company. These are separate, and they require separate planning.
LLC Operating Agreement With Death and Incapacity Provisions
Your LLC operating agreement is the governing document for your company. It controls what happens to your ownership interest when you die, who takes over management, and whether your family inherits full membership rights or only economic rights.
Under O.C.G.A. § 14-11-506, when a Georgia LLC member dies and the operating agreement is silent on the topic, the deceased member’s executor or administrator receives only assignee rights, not full membership rights. The executor cannot vote, manage, or control the business. They receive economic distributions, but they have no authority to run the company.
This default applies even if your spouse is your named beneficiary. Even if you intended for them to take over. Without an operating agreement that explicitly addresses member death, Georgia’s statutory default controls, and it almost never matches what the business owner wanted.
An updated operating agreement must include: what happens to your interest on death, what triggers a buyout, who has management authority during a transition, and provisions for incapacity (not just death).
Included in The Hive Law flat fee: No. Operating agreement drafting and updating is priced separately as part of the business succession package ($8,000 to $10,000).
Buy-Sell Agreement
A buy-sell agreement is a contract between co-owners that controls what happens when one owner dies, becomes incapacitated, wants to exit, or files for bankruptcy. It sets the buyout price, payment terms, and funding mechanism.
Without a buy-sell agreement, your family may inherit your share of the business with no buyout obligation from the surviving partner. Or the surviving partner may be forced to run the business with your spouse, who knows nothing about operations, as a co-owner.
Most buy-sell agreements are funded with life insurance. The insurance payout covers the buyout when a triggering event occurs, so the surviving owner does not have to liquidate business assets to buy out the deceased owner’s family.
Solo business owners still benefit from a buy-sell agreement if they plan to bring in a partner, employee-owner, or family member as a future co-owner. It sets the terms before the relationship starts.
Included in The Hive Law flat fee: No. Buy-sell agreements are priced at $1,500 to $3,000 depending on structure and number of owners.
Business Valuation
A business valuation establishes the fair market value of your company. It is required to fund a buy-sell agreement accurately, to establish a baseline for estate planning, and to support any transfer of business interest to a trust or family member.
The Hive Law refers clients to qualified business appraisers for this work. It is outside the scope of legal document drafting but is a required input for a buy-sell agreement to function correctly.
Included in The Hive Law flat fee: No. Referred to a qualified appraiser outside The Hive Law.
Key Man Life Insurance
Key man life insurance (also called key person insurance) is a policy the business owns on a critical employee or owner. If that person dies, the business receives the payout, which covers revenue loss, recruiting costs, and business continuity expenses during the transition.
For a solo business owner, key man insurance on yourself protects the business while your estate plan is being administered. For a multi-owner business, it can fund the buy-sell agreement.
The Hive Law refers clients to licensed insurance professionals for key man coverage. It is a financial product, not a legal document, but it must be coordinated with your buy-sell agreement and your trust.
Included in The Hive Law flat fee: No. Referred to a licensed insurance professional.
The Coordination Layer — How These Documents Must Work Together
This is what no other estate planning guide covers, and it is the most important part.
Personal documents and business documents are not independent lists. They only work if they reference each other. A trust that does not include your LLC interest does nothing for your business. A buy-sell agreement that conflicts with your operating agreement creates legal disputes, not clean transitions.
The coordination layer has three components:
Beneficiary Designations Coordinated With the Trust
Life insurance, retirement accounts, and business buy-sell agreements all pass by beneficiary designation, not by your trust or your will. If your beneficiary designation names your spouse directly instead of your trust, that asset bypasses your trust entirely and may create estate tax or creditor exposure problems.
Every beneficiary designation you hold must be reviewed and aligned with your trust before the plan is complete. This is a step most business owners skip, and it is one of the most common gaps Melissa finds during strategy calls.
Trust Amendment to Include LLC Interest
Your revocable living trust must be formally amended to include your LLC membership interest. This is not automatic. You must execute an assignment of LLC interest that transfers your ownership stake into the trust as trustee.
Without this assignment, your LLC interest is still in your personal name. When you die, it goes through probate, not through your trust, and your family loses the speed and cost protections the trust was designed to provide.
Operating Agreement That References the Personal Trust
Your LLC operating agreement must acknowledge that a member’s interest may be held in a revocable living trust and must allow the trust (through its trustee) to hold full membership rights, including management and voting rights.
Without this provision, some operating agreements can be read to prevent a trust from holding membership rights at all. The result: the trust holds the interest on paper, but the trustee has no authority to act on it.
All three documents, the trust, the assignment of LLC interest, and the operating agreement, must reference each other. This is the coordination layer. It is what separates a real business estate plan from a stack of documents that fall apart when tested.
Self-Audit Checklist — Do You Have All Three Layers?
Go through this checklist against your current documents. Check the ones you have. Flag the ones you do not.
Personal Layer
- Revocable living trust: signed, notarized, and funded with your assets
- Pour-over will: signed and in your files alongside the trust
- Financial durable POA: explicitly authorizes business actions
- Healthcare directive + HIPAA authorization: both signed
- Deed transfer: real property retitled into the trust
Business Layer
- LLC operating agreement: includes provisions for member death, member incapacity, and management succession
- Buy-sell agreement: signed by all owners, funded with life insurance, includes a current valuation
- Business valuation: completed within the last 3 years
- Key man life insurance: policy in force on key owners or employees
Coordination Layer
- Beneficiary designations reviewed: all designations aligned with the trust
- Assignment of LLC interest executed: membership interest formally transferred into the trust
- Operating agreement references the trust: allows trustee to hold full membership rights
- Buy-sell agreement and operating agreement do not conflict: both reviewed together by the same attorney
If you checked fewer than eight items, your plan has gaps. Most business owners who call The Hive Law have two or three items checked. A 30-minute strategy call identifies which gaps are urgent and what it costs to close them.
What Each Document Costs at The Hive Law
See the full business owner estate planning price list with the line-item calculator.
Georgia has no state estate tax. The state decoupled from the federal estate tax in 2014, so Georgia business assets pass free of state-level estate tax regardless of value. Your planning costs are legal fees, not tax-driven complexity.
Here is what each layer costs at The Hive Law:
Personal Layer — $4,000 Flat Fee (All Included)
- Revocable living trust: included
- Pour-over will: included
- Financial durable POA (with business authority language): included
- Healthcare directive + HIPAA authorization: included
- Deed transfer for one property: included
The $4,000 flat fee covers the complete personal layer. No hourly billing. No surprise invoices.
Business Succession Package — $8,000 to $10,000
- LLC operating agreement drafted or updated with death, incapacity, and succession provisions: included
- Assignment of LLC interest into the trust: included
- Coordination review of all existing documents: included
- Buy-sell agreement: included (single structure; complex multi-owner agreements may be at the higher end of the range)
The $8,000 to $10,000 range reflects the complexity of the business structure, number of owners, and whether existing documents need to be reconciled or drafted from scratch.
Priced Separately or Referred Out
- Business valuation: referred to qualified appraiser (outside The Hive Law scope)
- Key man life insurance: referred to licensed insurance professional
- Additional property deed transfers beyond the first: priced separately
Compare these costs to the alternative: if your business interest goes through Georgia probate, your family pays an average of $15,000 in attorney fees and court costs, before accounting for lost revenue during the 9 to 18 months the business hangs in legal limbo.
