Mitzi Perdue

The Soft Issues Are Really the Hard Issues!

If you’re part of a business family and you’re also a parent of a school age child, which would be easier for you to do?  Be honest!

Choice A: Have the Sex Talk with your child

Choice B: Have the Money Talk with your child

According to Susan R. Schoenfeld, Founder of Wealth Legacy Advisors LLC in NYC, “In many families, parents are more comfortable having the sex talk than the money talk.”

However, as she points out, in today’s Internet age, the money information is already out there. “Even if the young ones haven’t googled the family (although they probably have), they see how you live.”

But let’s suppose they haven’t looked up the family on the Internet, and maybe they’re not terribly observant. But even so, she points out, “At Thanksgiving, when you’re downstairs talking with the other grownups, the kids are upstairs sharing information. They already know more than you can imagine!”

According to Schoenfeld, “If you don’t talk with the young ones in your life, you lose the opportunity to shape the information in the way that’s most helpful to the child.”

In her view, the younger you start, the better. For the very young, the information can be in the form of stories, such as, “Grandfather and Grandmother came over on a boat from Italy and started a little grocery story. People liked their store, and your Aunt and Daddy and Mommy started other grocery stores and today it’s Whole Foods.”

Schoenfeld is joking about Whole Foods, but she isn’t joking that it’s a really good idea to tell young family members how it all started. “Your stories will live on after you’re gone. They’ll shape your family’s culture.”

As the kids get older, Schoenfeld suggests teaching them basic financial literacy, and about stewardship and philanthropy. Schoenfeld also believes the family should talk about their estate planning.

Take the case of Annie and Mary Smith. (Not their real names.) Not understanding their parent’s estate planning resulted in an unnecessary rift and irremediable pain.

At the time the parents were deciding on their wills, the two sisters were in very different situations. Annie was a successful businesswoman, and had married a man who was even more successful. Financially she was set.

Her sister’s situation was different. Because of lifelong illnesses, Mary never had a career.

When their parents died, both sisters were in for a shock. Their parents had left every penny to Mary.

An outsider looking at the situation would assume that the parents had done this for the simple reason that it was Mary who needed the money. But this wasn’t how it felt to Annie.

Being left out of the will felt to Annie as if her parents didn’t love her. It left Annie feeling devalued and depressed.

It wasn’t that Annie needed the money. It was the symbolism behind the money that was so tormenting. To Annie, as with many of us, money symbolizes love, approval, support, and caring. And she had been cut out.

To make matters even worse, the unequal will caused a rift between the sisters. And now a seriously bad situation was about to get even worse.

Within a year, Mary’s already fragile health worsened and she passed away. Because of the rift stemming from the parents’ unequal will, Mary left everything to a distant cousin instead of to her sister.

The raw misery Annie had felt at being cut out of her parents’ will was now multiplied exponentially. Annie not only lost a sister whom she had once cherished, she had to live with knowing that their rift was memorialized in the will and now could never be undone.

Thinking about the story of Mary and Annie, Schoenfeld says, “Bequests are messages from those who are no longer here. Make sure you convey the message that you intend. If only Mary’s and Annie’s parents had explained what they meant, this tragedy might have been avoided.”

People sometimes dismiss situations such as these as being “soft issues.” To Schoenfeld this denigrates and belittles how important they are. “These are the issues that keep you up at night. They’re not the ‘soft issues,’ they’re the ‘human issues.’”

To get the human issues right, talk about them.

To contact Susan R. Schoenfeld, you can call her at 212 655-9610 or e-mail her at schoenfeld@WLALLC.com

Her website is: www.WLALLC.com .