Business Owner Should Plan for the Unexpected ; Develop a Succession Strategy discusses five possibilities for business continuation to ensure that the business owner's family and heirs share in the wealth of the company when the business owner is no longer around:

• Family succession – "Statistically only 30 percent of family businesses survive the second generation." Plan ahead to ensure the next generation has the skills necessary to succeed.
  
• Employees can take over the business – An ESOP is a vehicle to employee ownership and provides the owner and their heirs with fair market value.
  
• Stockholder, partnership or operating agreements that address death, disability and disengagement – This option provides a contingency plan for some of the worst-case scenarios.
  
• The sale of a business to a third party – It is important to plan for this option to get favorable terms, as the ""fire sale" prices never satisfy the surviving family."
  
• Sale through an initial public offering – This option "is never achieved soon after a business owner dies, becomes disabled or retires unless the IPO planning is very far along."

The premise of the article is to make sure you make succession planning a priority, or as the article puts it, "no one plans to fail, but fails to plan". Check out this post for more information on succession planning: Benefits of Succession Planning