For many farm and ranch families, bringing children or grandchildren into the operation is the ultimate goal. Successfully bringing additional family members into the operation may require some creativity as all parties need to maintain a viable standard of living. This article is part of a series that will highlight ideas and tactics for bringing another family member into the operation. If this is the first article you are seeing in this series, I would encourage you to go back to the previous articles for background and additional guidance. A previous article discussed how life insurance should be structured, and the different types of life insurance.

Life insurance can be a key tool for farm and ranch businesses to provide tax-free death benefits at the death of the insured if the policy is structured correctly. This article discusses how agricultural businesses can use second-to-die permanent life insurance policies to equalize an inheritance amongst heirs.

One of the challenges of estate planning for farm and ranch families is that if they have multiple children, it can be difficult to leave them an equal value of assets at death. One way to help equalize the inheritance amongst heirs could be to utilize a life insurance policy.

Let’s look at a common example. (continue reading)

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