At some point you will leave your business. Despite this certainty, many business owners never stop to consider what will happen after they are gone, much less how to put together a recipe for a successful estate plan.

A buy-sell agreement doesn’t prevent succession or estate problems in the event one of your company’s owners encounters one of the three D’s (death, divorce or disability), but it can help guide you through the situation. If you can create a buy-sell agreement in the saner times, you can protect your interests and safeguard the life of your business.

The buy-sell agreement is a legal document that specifies how a company or its owners will redistribute ownership shares after one of the owners dies, becomes disabled, retires or otherwise leaves. Get an introduction to the three basic types of buy-sell agreements with this article.

You don't have to slash and burn to revive a dying company. In fact, a makeover is more effective than a mauling, says successful turnaround engineer Robert Peiser.