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Balboa Press - Dayle Spencer , William Spencer

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85 pages

English

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The greatest threats to multi-generational wealth are not external, rather they come from within the family, due to poor communication and lack of trust. It is time to talk about the elephant in the room.
Everyone sees it, but few are willing to say anything about it. It is the obvious, or difficult situation that people just want to ignore. Families try to behave like it is not there. It is the elephant in the room. "Can We Talk? The Unspoken Issues That Challenge High Net Worth Families," offers readers insights from the authors' experience in helping their clients overcome thorny family dynamics that tear at the family fabric. Drawing on their work with more than 100 high net worth families, the authors introduce and explain proven strategies and approaches that help families, and their financial advisors, get unstuck.

Sujets

Vie de famille

Relations familiales

Wealth Management

Economie gestion

Economics

Business

Finance

Informations

Publié par	Balboa Press
Date de parution	09 novembre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9798765234822
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Also by William J. Spencer
Political Will, Bending the Arc of History
Also by Dayle E. Spencer
Loving Allie, Transforming the Journey of Loss
Loving Spirit, Self-help for the Journey of Loss
International Negotiations,
Analysis, Approaches, Issues
Edited by V.A. Kremenyuk

Can We Talk?

The Unspoken Issues that Sabotage High Net Worth Families

William and Dayle Spencer

Copyright © 2022 William J. Spencer and Dayle E. Spencer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press
A Division of Hay House
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.balboapress.com
844-682-1282

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Commercial Images are licensed by Shutterstock.
All other images were taken by the authors.

ISBN: 979-8-7652-3481-5 (sc)
ISBN: 979-8-7652-3482-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022917420

Balboa Press rev. date: 11/08/2022

Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
The Softer Side of Wealth Advice
Case Studies: Turning Conflict into Cohesion
The Importance of Trusting Relationships
Conflicts in High Net Worth Families
Killing the Goose
Fathers and Sons
Avoiding the Prince Charles Dilemma
Siblings Out of Balance
Insights from Civil Wars
After the War, the Peace
Collaborative Divorce: Going from “I do” to “We do”
Strains and Stresses
Seeking to Understand Midlife
Lessons about Grief and Loss
Hostage Children
Raising Balanced Children
Getting a Family to the Table
About the Authors

Acknowledgements
The professionals who serve as Senior Advisors to the Spencer Legacy Group (SLG) live in eight states across the country. Members of the practice include:
• Beth M. Karassik, PhD
Harry V. Ruffalo, JD
• David E. Morrison, III, MD
Alan Kirshenbaum, MBA
• Andrew S. Kane, OBE, PhD
David E. Morrison, II, MD

Together, with our colleagues, SLG collectively represents over 250 years of experience in assisting high net worth (HNW) families to manage their most challenging issues.
We’d especially like to thank our colleagues, Beth Karassik, PhD, and Andy Kane, OBE, PhD, for their contributions to this book.
As Principals and Founders of SLG we wish to thank our colleagues for their insights and collaboration in helping us refine our approaches to better serve our clients.
Most often we are invited to work with HNW families through the kind referral of private bankers who reach out to SLG with the purpose of helping their banking clients. We are grateful for the confidence they place in us, and the services we believe they perform for their clients by making introductions when appropriate. SLG does not pay fees to financial institutions for their referrals. SLG engagement contracts are made directly with HNW families.
Finally, we’d like to acknowledge and thank each member of each family who has turned to SLG for guidance when they were stuck. Maintaining your trust and confidence, while serving your needs, is the bedrock of our mission and purpose. Although some of your stories have been drawn upon in writing this book, we took care to disguise your identities, your locations, and your issues.

Preface
Everyone sees it, but few are willing to say anything about it. It’s the obvious, or difficult situation that people just want to ignore. Families try to behave like it is not there. It is the elephant in the room.
We have found that when clients invite us in, it is due to the pain they experience, and the fears they feel for their family. Our work with families is private, of course, but as confidential as our involvement is, our results and learnings are offered here by anonymous examples to help you to better understand your own unique family challenges.
Fears about how money will be spent, saved, earned or shared can bring about emotional drama in any family. In high net worth families, these situations can be extraordinarily frustrating, and sad precisely because family members feel they should be capable of resolving their own private issues.
Through our decades of engagement experience, we have come to understand these specific family dynamics, whether they are driven by feelings of entitlement, jealousy, mental health issues, rivalry or illness. Wealthy families tend to judge themselves and one another harshly. As invited guests to family dysfunction, we do not judge, rather we seek to understand in order to help facilitate family members to positive outcomes.

We began SLG family consulting after years of professional practice in conflict resolution. The families who first requested our help, we now call friends. We are grateful and honored that they saw something special in us that could benefit them. It is our hope that our unique skills and experience can be of service to your family.
Can we talk?
Will and Dayle

Can
We
Talk?
The Softer Side of Wealth Advice
By
Dayle E. Spencer, JD

When a 2012 study published by Harvard Business Review revealed that 70% of family owned businesses failed before the second generation even got a chance to take over from the wealth creators, most readers would have attributed the reasons for such failures to typical business challenges: market fluctuations, cost of capital, poor investment advice, lack of qualified labor, legal hurdles, or other normal business problems.
Not talking about the elephant in the room doesn’t make it go away.

Surprisingly though, the Harvard study and many others have found that the legacy of high net worth families is more often eroded by such issues as family feuds, egos, emotions, poor communication and trust, and lack of preparation of the next generation for leadership.
The inability to maintain and preserve family wealth and legacy multi-generationally is well recognized in many cultures. In China they say, “wealth never survives three generations.” In Brazil, its “rich father, noble son, poor grandson.” And, here in the United States, it is “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.”
The Harvard study, “Avoid the Traps that can Destroy Family Businesses,” by George Stalk Jr. and Henry Foley, noted that only 15% of family owned businesses fail due to poor legal, investment or tax advice. These are the areas where business leaders typically know what they don’t know and are comfortable asking for help to improve their decision making processes. There is no stigma attached to a wealth creator admitting that he or she doesn’t know how to create complicated operating agreements, or amortize assets over the life of their use, or whether to invest in riskier but higher return options, or to accept lower returns on safer investments.
At SLG we call the advice that families receive from their wealth managers, tax and legal advisors the hard skills. Such advice is usually based on laws or regulations, and is pretty standard for the industry.
A cadre of licensed, experienced professionals works very hard to provide them with the latest and best advice in these areas to help insure their legacy.
The Soft Skills include:
• Better communication
• Enhancing trust
• Agreeing on shared values
• Developing a family’s vision and mission
• Dealing with mid-life challenges
• Resolving intra-family conflicts
• Collaborative divorce
• Aging issues, e.g., dementia
• Preparing the next generation for leadership
• Transforming grief and loss

SLG offers a panoply of soft skills that help address the types of challenges faced by these families where there are no hard and fast rules or regulations to guide their path. Perhaps a story will best illustrate the nature of our work.
Following the death of their parents, the wealth generators, a Florida family of seven siblings was facing the issue of what to do with the family vacation home. It had been left to them to share in a trust that provided that the last surviving sibling would own it outright. Their parents had created the trust based on the way the home had been used in the past, for large family gatherings, and with the expectation that those practices would continue.
Over time, however, as the siblings married, started their own families and moved away, their relationship to the home and even to each other shifted. Some, who lived nearby, used the retreat frequently just as it had been used during the lifetime of their parents. Others, however, preferred to vacation elsewhere, almost never going back to the family home.
The trust provided for the maintenance and upkeep of the proper