Family-Owned Business Counsel · Chicago, Illinois

Chicago Family Business Attorney
Sword and shield for the family business.

Q: My business is owned by my spouse and me. Is this still relevant?

Yes. Even a two-spouse business has succession questions — what happens at death of either spouse — tax planning opportunities, and asset-protection considerations. The legal architecture is simpler than a multi-generational family business, but the questions are the same. Adam structures the documents so they grow with the business.

By Adam Lysinski, Attorney · Updated May 16, 2026

A family-owned business is where seven legal practices meet. Ownership and corporate governance. Estate planning and asset protection. Buy-sell agreements between siblings, between spouses, between generations. Employment of family members. Real estate held by the business. Tax planning that crosses business and personal lines. The role of family business counsel is to draft the architecture that protects what the family has built — and to stand behind that architecture when it needs defending. Adam Lysinski has served family-owned businesses across Chicago since 2003. The role is sword and shield, applied to the family that built something worth protecting.

Engagement on retainer or fixed-fee scopes. Initial Family Business Assessment: complimentary 60-minute structured consultation with a written summary. Most engagements span ownership, operating agreements, succession planning, and the personal estate planning that connects to the business. Polish-language counsel available throughout.

Initial Family Business Assessment complimentary

Operating Agreement + Buy-Sell fixed fee at intake

Comprehensive Family Business Plan package fee at intake

Ongoing family business counsel monthly retainer

Specific retainer quoted at intake after family business profile review.

Scope of Work

→ Family business entity formation and operating agreement drafting (LLC, S-Corp, family limited partnership, holding company structures)
→ Buy-sell agreements between family members, between generations, and at retirement or death
→ Family employment policies and compensation structures
→ Generational succession planning — bringing children into ownership, transitioning operational control, exit strategies
→ Estate planning that integrates with the business — wills, trusts, gifting strategies, valuation discounts, GST planning
→ Family business asset protection — operating business, real estate held in family LLCs, personal assets of owners
→ Pre-marital and post-marital agreements that protect family business interests
→ Business sale or transfer to next generation — valuation, buyout structures, financing, tax treatment
→ Coordination with family CPAs, financial advisors, and family office staff
→ Polish-language family business counsel for Polish-American multi-generational businesses

A family-owned business is where the rules of corporate governance, employment law, estate planning, and family relationships sit on top of each other. The operating agreement says one thing. The estate plan says something else. The marriage that produced the next generation of owners has its own implications. When all four documents are drafted by different attorneys at different times for different purposes, the family business carries quiet contradictions in its legal foundation. Family business counsel is the practice that drafts and maintains the documents as a coherent system, so the family does not discover the contradictions during a moment of transition.

The role is two-sided. The shield is preventive — agreements that anticipate the questions before they arise, structures that protect the business from the personal lives of the owners and protect the owners from the business itself, and succession plans that move ownership across generations cleanly. The sword is responsive — when agreements are tested, when interests need defending, when the family needs an advocate who already knows the architecture. Most family business counsel is shield work. The sword work is what proves the shield was built right.

Family business counsel pulls from every other practice. The operating agreement is business law. The buy-sell is business law and estate planning. The succession plan is estate planning, asset protection, and tax. The real estate held in the family LLC is real estate law and entity governance. Adam handles each of these threads in his own practice and has done so for more than two decades. Family business counsel is the practice where they meet — coordinated, integrated, and built for the family that needs all of them at once.

Adam has served the Polish-American business community in Chicago for more than two decades, including as legal liaison to the Polish Consulate General. Many Polish-American families in Chicago run businesses started by parents or grandparents who arrived in the United States and built something across two generations. The legal architecture for these businesses sometimes was not built with American legal precision — operating agreements drafted casually, succession assumptions never written down, real estate titled in informal patterns. Adam restructures these businesses for the next generation while honoring the work of the one that came before. Polish-language consultations and documentation are conducted entirely in Polish.

Family business counsel is, in the end, about taking care of the people who are taking care of each other. The legal documents are the structure. The work is what those documents protect. That is what this practice exists to do.

Why Adam handles Illinois family business counsel

As former legal liaison to the Polish Consulate General in Chicago, Adam has standing in the Polish-American family business community across Chicago — restaurants, construction, manufacturing, professional services, contractors — a segment Adam is well-positioned to serve.

Former Chief Legal Officer at multiple PE-backed companies across diverse industries means Adam has been the operating-side legal head for businesses where ownership, succession, and family dynamics intersected.

AIGP credential matters for family businesses adopting AI tools or hiring under HB 3773 — generational fault lines around AI policy are increasingly common in family-owned employers.

Former service on the Illinois ARDC Hearing Board informs family-business dispute prevention — judgment shaped by years of reviewing how attorney engagements go wrong informs how Adam structures shareholder agreements, buy-sell provisions, and succession plans.

Polish-American family business counsel

The Polish-American business community in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs runs a meaningful slice of the regional economy in restaurants and food service, residential and commercial construction, contractor trades, manufacturing, professional services, real estate holdings, and import-export. Many of these businesses are first or second generation, family-owned, and structured as LLCs or S-corporations under operating documents that have not been touched in a decade or more.

The legal questions are specific to the segment. Succession planning across a generation gap where the founder speaks Polish as a primary language and the children operate in English. Real-property holdings in Poland that need to be coordinated with Illinois estate plans. Employment and HB 3773 compliance for businesses that hire across the Polish-speaking labor pool. Operating agreements that contemplate Polish-citizen co-owners who may relocate. US-Polish tax-treaty considerations for distributions, gifts, and inheritances.

Adam handles this work in English or Polish, with documents executed in either language as the family situation requires, and with the cultural fluency that comes from years of Polish Consulate General legal liaison work.

Why this practice is different at Lysinski & Associates P.C.

Polish-American family businesses are a segment Adam serves directly. As the former legal liaison to the Polish Consulate General in Chicago, Adam has handled the full cross-section of Polish-American family-business legal needs — succession planning when one branch of the family stayed in Poland and another emigrated, dual-citizenship beneficiary structures, real estate held by US-resident decedents that includes property in Poland, and Polish-language operating agreements that bridge generational language differences inside the family business itself.

Adam holds the AIGP credential, which matters for family employers navigating Illinois HB 3773 compliance — AI-in-hiring rules apply to family businesses just as they do to large employers. As a former ARDC Hearing Board Judge, Adam brings disciplinary-grade judgment to family-business dispute prevention — the work is mostly governance design, and good governance is largely about anticipating conflict before it ripens.

Adam holds the IAPP AIGP credential.

Questions.

What is family-owned business counsel?

Integration of corporate governance, estate planning, succession, and family-relationship law for businesses owned by one or multiple generations of a family. Different from generic business law because the client is the family, not just the business. Different from generic estate planning because the largest asset in the estate is the business itself. Adam handles both threads — and the structures that connect them — as one coordinated practice.

My business is owned by my spouse and me. Is this still relevant?

My adult children work in the business. What do I need?

Employment agreements that work for family members. Buy-sell agreements that anticipate the children eventually owning the business. Compensation structures that hold up under IRS scrutiny on related-party transactions. Operating agreement provisions that govern when and how children become owners. A succession plan that moves operational control across generations on a timeline the family chooses, rather than one that gets chosen by circumstance.

How does estate planning connect to the family business?

Directly. The business interest is often the largest asset in the estate. How it transfers at death — sale, gift, trust distribution — has tax consequences in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Whether the business survives the founder depends on whether the estate plan and the business documents agree on what happens at death. Adam drafts both as one integrated system so the family is not navigating those questions in two different attorneys' offices.

We are a Polish-American family business. Do you understand our situation?

Adam has served the Polish-American business community in Chicago since 2003, including as legal liaison to the Polish Consulate General. Many of his family-business clients are first- and second-generation Polish-American owners. Polish-language consultations, documentation, and ongoing counsel are conducted entirely in Polish when preferred. The legal work is the same; the conversation happens in the language the family is most comfortable in.

What does this work cost?

Engagement-dependent. Most family business clients work on a monthly retainer that covers ongoing counsel, document review, and family meeting attendance. Project work — operating agreement drafting, buy-sell agreement, succession plan, estate plan integration — is fixed-fee. Initial Family Business Assessment is a complimentary 60-minute structured consultation with a written summary. Specific pricing is quoted at intake, before any work begins.

Not sure if it’s the right call?

That’s exactly what the triage call is for.

Five minutes. No charge. Adam tells you whether he can help — and if not, who can.

(773) 777-9888

4418 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago, IL 60630 · All calls returned within 1 business day.

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Where can Adam help today?

I’m selling a home → I’m buying a home → I need a will or trust → I’m a real estate broker →