Area of Practice

Estate & Succession Planning

The Practice

AQUILAW’s Estate and Succession Planning practice helps promoter families, founders, family offices and high-net-worth individuals plan for the transition of ownership, management, control and wealth across generations. Family-owned and promoter-led businesses drive a significant share of the Indian economy, and as they mature, ownership becomes more dispersed and succession increasingly complex, making structured planning essential to preserving both enterprise value and family harmony.

Key Service Offerings

Designing family constitutions, governance frameworks and family institutions, including family councils and assemblies, with defined roles, decision-making processes and conflict-resolution mechanisms.
Structuring and reorganising ownership, including holding companies, trusts, HUFs and partnerships, alongside shareholder arrangements, buy-sell mechanisms and exit frameworks.
Preparing and implementing wills, trusts, family settlements and other succession structures, including planning for incapacity and coordination of probate and estate administration.
Advising on the tax and regulatory implications of succession and wealth transfer structures, including gifting, trusts, HUFs and cross-border considerations under FEMA and applicable tax regimes.
Advising on cross-border and NRI succession planning, including jurisdiction-specific wills, multi-jurisdictional probate and coordination with overseas advisers.
Designing dispute prevention and resolution mechanisms, including family arbitration clauses, and representing families in inheritance, succession, trust and shareholder disputes.
Implementing succession and governance frameworks, including drafting and executing legal instruments, board reconstitution and coordination with other professional advisers.
Structuring family foundations, charitable trusts and other philanthropic vehicles, and advising on legacy and reputation planning.

The Aquilaw Advantage

Succession planning fails less often for lack of legal sophistication than for lack of timing — families tend to act only once a dispute has already begun. Our approach is to build governance and ownership structures while there is still enough goodwill in the family to make them fair, drawing on AQUILAW’s corporate, real estate, tax, regulatory and dispute resolution capabilities as one coordinated team rather than separate referrals. We stay engaged well beyond implementation, through periodic reviews and governance support as the family and business evolve, and our cross-border network lets us coordinate succession planning for families with members, businesses and assets spread across multiple jurisdictions.

The team navigate and facilitate complex commercial deals within tight timelines and readily provide innovative commercial solutions to overcome negotiation hurdles.