The viability, timing and success of intergenerational succession in family firms is driven, in large part, by the life stages of the generations involved and especially by the fit between the life stages of the parties.  If the incumbent generation is ready and willing to pass the leadership baton to a ready and willing successor the likelihood of a successful transition increases.  In spite of this, life stages and particularly the fit between the stages of the incumbent and successor have not been adequately explored in the family business succession literature.  This paper seeks to address that inadequacy and in doing so proposes a simple and yet elegant theory of incumbent-successor life-stage-fit and succession outcomes in the family firm.