Family Meetings Are a Waste of Time

There is much being written about the power and importance of a facilitated family meeting to helpprepare heirs. Here are my top-five reasons why you should never have a family meeting.

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1. Family meetings allow everyone to be seen and heard as equals. Democracy and kindness haveno place in a family. You’ve got the money—use it to control your adult children and grandchildren.They will appreciate you more when they have Power of Attorney over your finances and healthcare.

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2. Family meetings organized by a trusted advisor can lead to transparency, which undermines the power of secrets—especially money secrets. “Secrets” and “surprises” are the keys to growing, protecting, and transitioning generational wealth. This is especially true if you are planning to leave more assets to one of your children.

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3. Family meetings can have unintended consequences. For example, the rising generation maydecide to share the same wealth advisor, accounting firm, and law firm as their parents. Smoothwealth transitions are totally overrated. It’s smarter to leave significant wealth to adult children whohave no advisors. Sudden wealth works great for lottery winners—why not for your own children?

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4. Family meetings are often used to share family stories about how a prior generation saved, invested, and deferred consumption and gratification to build wealth. Smart families don’t connect their children to their wealth by sharing these stories. Instead, they use silence to pretend that wealth magically appeared. Magic should be a big part of every estate plan.

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5. Family meetings ruin the fun and excitement that follows when a will is revealed for the first time at a funeral home, when everyone is grieving. (Remember: the will names the executor, and in many jurisdictions the executor has the legal authority to implement final wishes.) People say that sharing your will with intended beneficiaries during a family meeting is a good idea, but many litigation lawyers would disagree.

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The $500,000 each of your children may spend to reach a one-day trial in open court over your disputed estate could be your greatest legacy. We’re all remembered for something. A staggering $3 billion is inherited every day in America -- $300 million in Canada (includingSaturdays and Sundays). Yet the courts in both countries are full of broken families in dispute. TheGreat Wealth Transfer is turning into the Great Family Disaster for tens of millions of people who remain unaware of their advisor’s ability to shape different outcomes through a facilitated family meeting.

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Ask your advisor if a family meeting is right for you.Tom Deans, Ph.D., is a full-time professional speaker and the author of three books on family wealth transitions: Every Family’s Business, Willing Wisdom, and The Happy Inheritor. He has delivered more than 2,000 keynotes in 29 countries.

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