Mitzi Perdue

Wealth Transfer? The Entire Family Is Your Client

Thirty-eight years ago, Karl Bareither, a Wealth Transfer Specialist, (WTS) commissioned a survey of family businesses. It changed his life, it changed his clients’ lives, and if you advise family businesses, it could change yours.  

The survey of members of 200 family businesses showed him unequivocally that successful wealth transfer across the generations required redefining who his clients were.  His old model of meeting with only the current business owner wasn’t enough.

Involve the Entire Family

He realized that for true success, the process needed to involve all the family members. To see how this works, let’s look at one of the clients he helped. The names and details are disguised, but the story is real.

When Bareither first met Annette Montag, she was a 68 years old widow and the owner of a successful farming and oil enterprise. Her six children were each receiving an annual income of almost half a million dollars a year.

You might think that this would be the happiest of families. But it wasn’t.

One of her sons was so angry at his sister that they both spent over a million dollars paying their lawyers to establish a fence between their jointly owned properties. The other siblings began taking sides in the argument, and in short order, they were all furious with each other.  

One of the children suggested a meeting to try to hash things out, but the relationships had deteriorated to the point the siblings didn’t even want to be in the same room with each other.  

Annette Montag asked her lawyers and accountants for help, but unfortunately, they weren’t qualified to deal with the underlying relationship issues.  At that point she heard about Bareither.

Some Problems Are Relatively Easy to Resolve

To assist with their relationship problems, Bareither began by meeting separately with the siblings, the mother, and each of her trusted advisors. He was learning what each one’s issues were.

In a surprising number of cases, the issues were based on distrust caused by lack of open family communication.  As a trained wealth transfer specialist, he had facilitation and mediation skills along with the technical knowledge necessary to resolve these kinds of challenges. 

With many of the issues removed from the picture, there was now more room to establish improved family communications. But of course, issues remained.  

Discovering Shared Values 

Bareither spent time with the individual family members, painting a picture of how much better their quality of life would be if they could deal with their problems constructively. From this exercise, he got buy-in for conducting a family retreat. 

In preparation for this meeting, he asked each participant, “What are your expectations for this retreat?”  One of the universal answers was, they wanted to have improved family relationships and they wanted to spare their children the misery that they had experienced. 

The meeting took place at a neutral location, and for the first time in decades, family members focused on a shared goal. This was the beginning of a process that spanned several years and that included other invited specialists. 

With professional help, family members addressed issues relating to business organizational matters, addiction issues, and assistance with behavioral changes.  Today these family members have the tools to discuss issues in a civil manner. Everyone gets heard, they vote, and when a decision is made, they move on.

Bareither would like to share his expertise so other family business advisors can experience this kind of positive impact.  “We’ve put together a three-day training program, to help you,” he says.

If you’d like to know more about his time tested process, or would like to become a licensed Wealth Transfer Specialist, visit his website at: http://www.advisor.fbrsystem.com or contact him at: karl@fbrsystem.com .