Hypothetical case study developed on the basis of our experience with families dealing with international matters, intended to illustrate the type of operations the Firm is able to structure and manage for clients with a similar profile; the scenario does not refer to any specific case actually handled.

A sixty-two-year-old entrepreneur, founder of a metalworking company worth three million euros, three children with radically different aspirations: one has worked in the company for fifteen years and is ready to take the helm, one is a doctor with no interest in the business, the third is twenty-four and has not yet defined his own path. A wife with succession rights to protect and personal assets that intertwine with those of the company. The entrepreneur knows that, without planning, his death will turn the company into a battlefield among heirs with incompatible interests: those who want to manage, those who want to sell, those who do not yet know what they want. The typical result is corporate paralysis, the erosion of the company’s value and, in the worst cases, the forced liquidation of a business that could have prospered for another generation. This is the case of an entrepreneur who chooses to plan the generational handover during his lifetime, building a structure that protects the company, recognises the merit of those who work in it and does not penalise those who have made different choices.

Hypothetical case study developed on the basis of our experience with families on international matters, intended to illustrate the type of operations the Firm is able to structure and manage for clients with a similar profile; the scenario does not refer to any specific case actually handled.

An Italian entrepreneur resident in Milan dies leaving an estate distributed between Italy, the United States and Switzerland, and four heirs scattered across just as many countries: the wife in Milan, a son in London, a daughter in New York and a brother in Zurich. A succession that opens in Italy but that produces effects in four different jurisdictions, each with its own rules on the taxation of inheritances, on the recognition of testamentary provisions, on the rights of forced heirs and on the procedures for the transfer of assets. The Regolamento UE 650/2012 identifies Italian law as applicable, but the post-Brexit United Kingdom does not recognise it, the United States applies its own probate system to every asset located in American territory, and Switzerland has its own rules on the transfer of bank accounts in favour of foreign heirs. Four legal systems, four tax systems, four different procedures to coordinate in parallel without inertia on one front blocking the others. The type of succession that, without a single direction, drags on for years generating costs, conflicts and paralysis.