File MF-041: the exit that almost evaporated.

The founder arrived twenty months before the sale, which is the single luckiest fact in this file. He didn't know the sale was coming — but his cap table did, and so did the pattern of inbound emails he showed us at the first meeting. We planned as if the exit were certain and dated it conservatively. It landed eight weeks late. Close enough.

What twenty months buys

Qualified small-business stock treatment needs runway. Trust structures need seasoning. Charitable machinery needs to exist before the liquidity event, not after the wire lands. None of this is exotic — all of it is calendar-bound, and the calendar is merciless. Started the week the term sheet arrives, most of it is simply unavailable.

Move	Deadline it beat	Value
QSBS stacking across family trusts	12 mo pre-LOI	$2.7m
Donor-advised fund, funded pre-sale	Any date pre-signing	$0.9m
State residency review (genuine move)	18 mo pre-close	$0.6m

Figures rounded, verified against filed returns; published with the client's written permission.

The week before term sheets

The estate documents were signed on a Tuesday. The first term sheet arrived the following Monday. The founder called it luck; we call it the reason the Planning desk dates everything conservatively. Either way, the trusts were seasoned, the DAF was funded, and the family's position was already structured when the negotiation began.

The tax bill was going to be the largest invoice of my life, and I'd spent zero hours on it. Meridian spent two hundred.

Where the file stands now

The proceeds sit in the same boring, evidence-based portfolio every Meridian client holds — the exit changed the numbers, not the discipline. The founder's two teenagers attended their first family meeting last spring. File MF-041 stays open; roads don't end at the exit.