HBO's Succession dramatizes a real risk: a founder who delays naming a successor, then suffers a sudden medical incapacity, leaving the business and family in chaos. The show is fiction, but the underlying problem, no succession plan, no updated power of attorney, no clear decision maker, plays out in real family businesses every year.
Succession follows the Roy family and their media conglomerate, Waystar Royco, as aging patriarch Logan Roy toys with naming a successor among his four children while refusing to actually hand over control. The show works as drama because it captures a genuine business planning failure with real legal and financial consequences.
The Core Problem: A Leader Who Will Not Choose
Logan spends the show's early episodes suggesting first one child, then another, is his likely successor, without ever formalizing the decision. This is a common pattern among founders of closely held businesses. According to SCORE, only about half of small business owners have any succession plan in place, even among those approaching retirement age, and SCORE recommends starting the process three to five years before an expected transition, not waiting for a crisis to force the decision.
What a Succession Plan Actually Covers
A succession plan for a family or closely held business answers questions that go well beyond who gets which shares: who has operational authority if the owner is suddenly unavailable, how key employees and non-family executives fit into the transition, and whether the business is meant to stay in the family, transition to key employees, or eventually be sold. Logan's company has non-family executives like Frank and Gerri who play critical roles precisely because the formal succession plan, unlike Logan's private hints to his children, actually designates authority to people outside the family.
Incapacity Changes Everything, Fast
When Logan suffers a medical emergency, the immediate question is not who inherits the company eventually, it is who has legal authority to make decisions right now. In the show, his wife Marcia holds his healthcare power of attorney and financial authority, which gives her practical control over his care and, by extension, real influence within the company while he recovers. This is exactly the function of a properly executed power of attorney: it names a specific decision maker in advance, so a medical crisis does not also become a governance crisis.
Verbal Promises Are Not a Plan
Before his medical emergency, Logan verbally tells his children he is changing the family trust in a way that dilutes their voting power. Because nothing was signed or formally executed, the children later argue the changes never legally took effect. This is a real and common problem outside of fiction too: verbal intentions, even clearly communicated ones, generally do not carry legal weight until they are actually documented and executed according to your state's requirements. If a plan matters, it needs to exist as a signed, valid document, not a conversation.
Questions Every Business Owner Should Ask
- Do I want the business passed to family, sold to key employees, or sold to an outside buyer?
- Have I actually documented my succession decision, or only discussed it informally?
- Who has legal authority over the business and my personal affairs if I become incapacitated tomorrow?
- Are my estate planning documents, including any trust covering business interests, currently signed and up to date?
- Does my chosen successor actually want the role, and are they prepared for it?
Separating Ownership From Management
One detail Succession gets right is the distinction between owning a business and running it. The Roy children hold ownership stakes and board votes, but day-to-day operational authority sits with executives like Frank, at least on paper, through the formal succession plan Logan already put in place. This split matters for real family businesses too: your estate plan can pass ownership shares to your children equally while still naming a single qualified person, family or not, to actually run daily operations. Conflating the two, assuming an owner is automatically the right operator, is one of the more common mistakes family businesses make when a founder dies or steps back suddenly.
Trusts as a Business Planning Tool
Logan's plan to shift voting shares into the family trust reflects a real and common strategy: holding business interests inside a trust rather than transferring them directly through a will. A trust can specify exactly how voting rights are allocated, when a beneficiary gains full control, and what happens if a designated successor is not ready or willing to take over. A PNC Insights guide on small business succession planning makes the same point: legal structuring, including trusts, is one of the core components of a real succession plan, alongside valuation and leadership development. For family businesses of real, non-fictional size, this structure can also help avoid probate delays at a moment when the business needs continuity of leadership most, and it can be updated as circumstances change without the same court involvement that reopening a will might require. Our guide on passing down a family business covers this in more depth.
How FastWill Helps With the Legal Side
While a full business succession plan often needs input from an accountant or business attorney, the personal estate planning side, your will, your power of attorney, and any trust holding business interests, is exactly what FastWill is built to handle. Getting these documents signed and current removes the single biggest failure point in the Roy family's story: decisions that were discussed but never legally finalized.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a business succession plan?
It is a documented plan covering who takes over leadership and ownership of a business if the current owner retires, becomes incapacitated, or dies, along with the legal and financial steps needed to make that transition happen.
Do family businesses need a formal succession plan even with a will?
Yes. A will controls what happens to your ownership stake after you die, but it does not address who has operational authority during a period of incapacity, which is where a power of attorney and a broader succession plan come in.
Can I verbally tell my children how I want my business handled?
You can, but as Succession illustrates, verbal statements generally are not legally binding until documented in a signed will, trust amendment, or other properly executed document.
Who should have power of attorney for a business owner?
Someone who understands both your personal wishes and, ideally, enough about the business to make informed decisions during your incapacity, whether that is a spouse, a trusted executive, or a professional fiduciary.
When should succession planning start?
SCORE recommends beginning three to five years before an expected transition, though the legal documents underlying it, your will, trust, and power of attorney, should be in place well before that.
Do not let your business planning depend on conversations that never get formalized. Start your will and power of attorney with FastWill today.
