Practice Areas - Family Owned Businesses
Barley Snyder has a long history of service to family owned businesses. We have a large group of family owned businesses that we have advised and with whom we have partnered through more than three generations of owners. As a result, we understand and pay particular attention to the unique challenges our clients face in operating a family owned business.
Our Family Business Group’s focuses on the special areas of planning and practice where the nature of family ownership or management raises considerations different from those that apply to other businesses - issues such as succession planning, organizational governance, dispute resolution, estate planning and tax issues. Our Family Business Group includes attorneys who are experienced in applying their particular practice area to the unique nature of a family owned businesses.
Our firm is also one of the founding members and a corporate sponsor of the S. Dale High Family Business Center at Elizabethtown College. John Reed, chair of our Family Business Group, leads the firm's efforts at the Center and is a frequent speaker and a regular resource for the Center’s CEO Roundtable and Emerging Leaders Groups.
Business Law - In the business law area, family business clients have issues similar to any non-family business, such as contract review; organizational structure, including developing subsidiaries, divisions and business trusts; employment issues and disputes. Our business attorneys understand the long-term outlook of family business owners and we partner with our family business clients to help them make decisions that ensure the long term viability of the family business.
Succession and Estate Planning - Barley Snyder’s Family Business Group offers comprehensive succession and estate planning advice. Planning for the future can be a challenge, and is especially important to a family business. Barley Snyder attorneys work closely with each client to develop a succession plan that best addresses the unique circumstances of the family business and its family members, while minimizing the tax burden to heirs. We take the time to consider every aspect of an individual's situation as we assist in creating and implementing a plan. Our trusts and estates team also provides assistance in the administration of estates, understanding that coping with the loss of a loved one is never easy. We provide professional and efficient estate administration services, lessening your concerns and allowing you to focus on the rest of your family life and the business.
Labor and Employment Law - Barley Snyder’s Family Business Group is also highly skilled in areas relating to labor and employment law. We represent your management team in all aspects of labor, employment, employee benefits and workers' compensation law, providing employers not only with legal advice but also with practical and creative solutions for their employment-related issues, issues that can be particularly sensitive and complicated in a family business environment. In the area of labor law we advise clients on handling union organizing campaigns, labor negotiations and grievances/arbitration, unfair labor practice claims and labor injunctions and labor litigation. With respect to employment law, our highly trained attorneys advise clients regarding problem employees, discrimination and other employment litigation, as well as with the development of employee handbooks and policy manuals, employment and non-competition agreements. Our attorneys also work with clients to develop qualified retirement plans, non-qualified plans and executive compensation, as well as health and other welfare plans.
Tax Issues - We advise clients on a wide range of matters involving the federal tax system - individual, partnership and corporate net income taxes, as well as federal estate and gift taxes. Our services include business transaction planning and dispute resolution, both administratively before the Internal Revenue Service and in the federal courts, including the Tax Court. We also have highly specialized and nationally recognized skills with respect to Pennsylvania taxes, which in recent decades have become ever more prominent because of the ever-growing need for money at the state level and the explosion in states' activity everywhere to extend their tax jurisdictions over out-of-state companies and individuals.
Attorneys
