Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the case of divorce in family business from a legal perspective and highlight the problems of applying family law in the family business context.

Design/methodology/approach – The authors rely on legal analysis and interviews with estate distribution executors to discuss problems with the legal rules and how they are practiced.

Findings – The findings show that the law is ill fitted to the situation where there is a family business included in the division of marital property. In divorce, family law dictates the division of marital property and the family business is reduced to an asset to be divided like any other. Critical issues are identified and elaborated.

Research limitations/implications – Divorce and other disruptions to the family system should be considered in family business consultancy among other threats to the business. The legal perspective on divorce in the family business offered here primarily concerns ownership issues. The impact of divorce on management is equally in need of exploration, which is the suggestion for further studies.

Practical implications – The paper illuminates in which ways the business is hampered from divorcing owners and discuss critical issues with applying family law in a family business context. Social implications – Policymakers should establish rules in which shares in an unlisted business are by default assigned to separate property until something else is contracted.

Originality/value – New light is shed on the practical problems of interpreting family law in a family business context advancing the understanding of family aspects in family business management.

This article contributes to the family business succession literature by (1) addressing ownership succession rather than management succession, (2) recommending a combination of legal and psychological perspectives on ownership to advance our understanding and (3) suggesting a preparatory approach to succession. Measuring the success of management succession has mainly been undertaken by assessing outcomes. Learning retrospectively why a succession was (un)successful may deepen our understanding of the process, but it is not particularly helpful to the business in question. We propose an alternative method for ownership succession: a preparatory approach that establishes requirements to fulfill before the succession takes place. These requirements are presented in a model that considers both the legal/financial and the psychological aspects of ownership and are formulated to improve intergenerational ownership succession and the post-succession prosperity of the firm.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME's), of which most are family owned businesses (FOB's), play a crucial role in upholding many of the topics at the heart of the International Conference on Applied Business Research. They are especially noteworthy in relation to economic development, growth and innovation, sustainable development and rural development. The practice of FOBs is quite different from large companies with scattered ownership (Nordqvist, Hall & Melin, 2009). The practice turn in social science, well embraced in management studies (Vaara & Whittington, 2012), is relevant to develop new knowledge in the field of business law. We study the practice of shareholder protection and aim to narrow the gap between theory and practice regarding business law and FOBs. An entrepreneurially friendly and inspiring environment presupposes that business owners can protect their ownership positions against unwanted acquisitions of shares, as well as that they are not unwillingly locked-in in a position as minority owners. In addition, this requires legal rules that are not unnecessarily costly, time and energy consuming to comply with, administer and uphold. Legislators should, if possible, thus provide a set of rules that facilitates for owners to effectively avoid both unwanted acquisitions of shares and locked-in positions. We conclude that default rules in the form of e. g. a right of first refusal should be included in the articles, since the lack of an open market place anyhow makes it highly difficult to sell the shares. Furthermore, we find it important to allow also clauses that enhance the possibility to avoid locked-in positions in the articles whereas most national legislations today permit only clauses that contribute to the protection of ownership positions. Key words: family business development, small-medium sized enterprises (SME), business law, share transfer restrictions, minority shareholders, articles of association, shareholder's agreement, practical implications.

The principle of ‘the best interests of the child’ (art. 3 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child) is sometimes put forward as being the leading guide, i.e. it will in the long run – via, e.g. court cases and legal writing – give accurate and detailed information on the scope of children’s rights and the responsibilities of, e.g., parents. We claim that this principle does not provide us with the necessary analytical tools to enhance the legal rights of children. To this end it is more efficient to accept the explanatory power and apply the elements of the Interest theory, i.e. the chain of children’s interests and rights, obligations of e.g. parents and sanctions against failures. In this context we also illustrate that rights can have different strengths by briefly examining the role of social authorities in relation to the rights of children.

This paper analyses succession in family firms from a contractual perspective. A firm is regarded as a nexus of contractual relations with owners, employees, suppliers of goods and services and customers. These contractual parties are in differing degrees tied to the firm through asset specificities. Succession can affect the value of such assets. In this sense they become stakeholders with vested interests in the succession process. The theoretical discussion of affected stakeholdersis backed up by a survey study of 143 Swedish family-owned businesses that have been subject to succession. The results show that the opinions of close shareholders such as family members and incumbent mangers as well as those of other stakeholders such as suppliers and customers are important.

The key to a successful transfer, of ownership of family-owned and headed businesses, to the younger generation is in most cases the incumbent. However, there are close and non-close stakeholders who wish to protect their interests. The main purpose of this article is to map the stakeholders in two models, as well as to analyze their interests and possible legal tools when intervening in an ownership succession process. Our reasoning is supported by descriptive data from a recent empirical study. Incumbents are presumed to be aware of the conflicting interests and their potential impacts. It is no wonder, that they hesitate to take the necessary initiative in a succession process! We analyze how consultants can provide a helping hand.