Succession in the Latin American Family Business, challenges from Cuba.

There are currently a great number of studies in the world dedicated to family businesses; although not all of them from a legal point of view, most of them have a focus on business, tourism and administration.

«The family is the institution available to society for regulating the procreation, care and education of children and the transmission by inheritance of property.»
Robert Bierstedt

There are currently a great number of studies in the world dedicated to the family business; although not all of them from a legal point of view, most of them have a focus on business, tourism and administration.

This is due to the proliferation of these entities and the importance they have acquired in the economic development of a large part of the world.

One of the fundamental aspects of the studies carried out is the continuity of the family business and the ways to guarantee an adequate succession, in such a way that the family business continues even after the death of the founder. All this without falling into what is known worldwide as the Rebecca Syndrome, according to which the successors after the death of the founder are not able to keep the company alive.

Some of the fundamental problems in this situation are the fiscal or tax issue, since in order to proceed with the succession of the company, most of the world legislation establishes a tax in this respect; another controversial issue is that of the succession or continuity of the company, caused to a great extent by family conflicts and inadequate succession planning.

Even though this is essentially the situation worldwide, this is not a topic frequently addressed in Cuba, especially from the legal point of view.

This is mainly due to the lack of regulation in this regard. However, it is considered that it is time to start thinking about it, since, despite the fact that the eminently private characteristic of the property in this type of enterprises implies incongruities with respect to our system, it is evident that in view of the opening that our country has had from the mercantile point of view and the economic changes that are developing with self-employed workers and the experimental regulation of non-agricultural cooperatives, the time will come when our society will be prepared from the practical point of view to start this type of more organized and larger scale business.

It is because of the concrete historical character of Law as a social phenomenon, that workers and researchers in the legal sphere cannot allow the social reality to be outdated with respect to legislation and studies from the doctrinal point of view in this regard.

Written by: MS.c. Isel Guirola Rodríguez. Assistant Professor, University of Matanzas/ Dr. Osvaldo Manuel Alvarez Torres- Consulting Professor.
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