Generationsskifte i familjeägda bolag : Med inriktning på arv och testamente

Sammanfattning: Swedish family companies are facing a tremendous change in the form of generation changes because of the large part of owners that are about to retire. If all 45 000 to 50 000 family companies ceases to exist, Sweden looses a significant part of business trade. There are numbers of different methods for an older generation of owners to transfer their companies to a younger generation such as inheritance, gift, will, internal stock transfer, division’s etc., where inheritance is the most complex area. That an owner of a company dies without any plan for the future of the company is not preferable because the rules of legal successions occur. The law system regarding inheritance is usually not a good method since the surviving wife, who has the primary right to the inheritance, may not be interested in the company. A further complication is when the deceased has a child with another woman because the child has better right to the inheritance than the surviving wife. As a result both the child and the surviving wife has legal inheritance of shares in the company and different opinions of the various owners of the company can lead to devastating consequences such as closure. Since many problems arise from succession I ask myself if ärvdabalken (1958:637) should be reformed? The owner of the company can instead create a will where the shares are allocated according to his wish. This method is more preferable than the succession because the rules of inheritance can be excluded. Another advantage with the will as a method for transfer of family-owned businesses is that the owner can make conditions by writing that the shares shall be private property for the recipient. Therefore the family company can stay within the family in case of divorce or decease.