Kids, Wealth, and Consequences: Ensuring a Responsible Financial Future for the Next Generation

Chapter 10. The Family Glue

By now we have covered many key variables that determine the extent to which your wealth can help or hinder your children's success, happiness, and preparedness to manage the wealth for which they may one day be responsible. The last element to our equation is family glue. If it is weak, no matter how financially educated and experienced your children may be, without the ability to work closely together to manage the family wealth, it will likely dissipate in a generation or two.

As Claudia Sangster, director of philanthropy, estate, and trust services at Harris myCFO, points out, "If the family members can't work together, after the parents die, all bets are off. That's when all things fly to the surface. So if you haven't dealt with strengthening family ties before then, the family can explode."

Even a perfectly airtight estate plan (if there were such a thing) will not ensure that your wealth will wind its way down to your children and grandchildren, or that they will work together to manage future family assets rather than squabble over who gets what and when. Sometimes, as we've seen throughout this book, money impedes healthy relationships and causes discord. It's therefore imperative that you devote significant time, attention and thought to how you can strengthen your family's cohesiveness. The degree to which you and your children are able to communicate, connect, work, and play together will help immunize all of you from some of the most insidious ...