New rules coming onto force so businesses may no longer be able to rely on the assumption that individuals classed as self-employed or engaged via subcontracting arrangements fall outside the regime.

Family Business United has announced the launch of a new Women in Family Business Community, creating a dedicated space to recognise, explore and celebrate the contribution women make to family businesses across the UK.

What if the infrastructure doesn't exist to answer it. Next-gen family members want visibility into how decisions get made. That request is entirely reasonable. What's missing is the layer that would make honouring it possible. The next generation is consistent about one thing. They want more communication. More transparency. More visibility into how decisions are made. This is not a cultural complaint. It is not ingratitude dressed up as governance feedback. The ask is legi

STEP, the professional body for trust and estate practitioners, has responded to the government's consultation on cohabitation reform, welcoming it as a long-overdue step towards fairness, but warns that marriage and civil partnership must remain legally distinct with safeguards in place. STEP supports a needs-based framework but says a poorly defined regime would increase litigation rather than reduce it. The consultation, A Fairer End to Relationships, closes 14 August 2026

For family business owners, divorce or the dissolution of a civil partnership is rarely just a personal matter. It can have far-reaching implications for the family, the business, employees, future succession plans and long-term wealth preservation.

Family business has always liked to think of itself as a meritocracy of blood and belonging. Ownership, involvement and eventually leadership are supposed to flow naturally through the generations. Yet for many women born into these enterprises, that flow has a well documented habit of stopping just short of the top job. The glass ceiling, a phrase coined for the corporate world, turns out to describe something distinctly familiar in the family business world too. What Do We

There is a particular kind of pressure that comes with inheriting a family business as a daughter. It is not the pressure of acquisition or ambition. It is something quieter, more complex, and considerably harder to talk about. It is the pressure of proximity: of taking over something that is not just a commercial enterprise but a life's work, a source of identity, and in many cases the thing that shaped your entire childhood, for someone who is still in the room. Most leader

For many people, making a Will is something that is quietly postponed. It is often seen as a task for later life, something to address once retirement approaches or when financial affairs feel settled.

One of the clearest patterns among leaders who step down successfully is that they begin investing in interests, relationships and activities outside the business well in advance.

A change of Prime Minister, an unsettled tax outlook and a steady drumbeat of speculation about inheritance tax, business property relief and wider reform have left plenty of family business owners wondering whether this is the moment to accelerate succession, delay it, or simply hold their nerve.

There is a particular tension that sits at the heart of many multigenerational family businesses — one that is rarely spoken about openly, but that shapes some of the most consequential decisions a family will ever make.

Every family business runs on two systems at once. There is the business itself, with its customers, its numbers and its decisions, and there is the family behind it, with its history, its loyalties and its unspoken expectations.

There comes a point in the life of many family businesses when the rules that have always lived in people's heads need to be written down.

Bringing in an external leader is one of the most consequential choices a family business can make

A new study has found that honesty about AI use at work may be backfiring, with employees who disclose using AI judged more harshly than peers who don't mention it.

There is a particular tension that sits at the heart of many multigenerational family businesses — one that is rarely spoken about openly, but that shapes some of the most consequential decisions a family will ever make.

Succession is one of the most written about subjects in family business. It is also one of the most poorly executed. Across generations and geographies, the same patterns repeat: transition plans that stall, timelines that slip, next generation leaders who are technically in post but not truly in charge.

The world is changing faster than most leadership models were built to handle. For family businesses, that creates both a particular pressure and a particular opportunity.

When family and business collide, and they will, having the right structure around the table is not a luxury. It is one of the most valuable investments a family business can make.

The gap between knowing that succession planning matters and actually doing it is one of the most consistent and consequential patterns in family business life.