A Family Meeting: Creating Shared Understanding Around Wealth

56% of Americans say their parents never discussed money with them. In this Couchside Conversations episode, Wealth Advisors Eric Selter, Priscilla Brehm, and Chris Galeski discuss why so many families avoid these conversations... and why they shouldn’t. They highlight how thoughtful family meetings can create shared understanding, reduce uncertainty, and help the next generation prepare for future responsibilities.

Their conversation highlights that successful family meetings aren’t necessarily about delivering lectures or revealing numbers, but rather creating dialogue, sharing values, and helping families align perspectives on how wealth can support what matters most.

Tune in if you're interested in…

* Why most families avoid talking about money, and why that can create bigger problems later
* The three different types of family meetings and when each one makes sense
* Whether parents should share their net worth with their children
* How to talk about inheritance, responsibility, and family values
* Practical ways to prepare the next generation for wealth

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Welcome. Thank you for all coming. This is an exciting topic for me in particular because I was with Chris on a financial commute and talking about this, and we all deal with this a lot. Okay, so that the title of this one is called A Family Meeting Creating Shared Understanding Around Wealth. Now most of you know that our tagline is helping clients get more life out of their wealth. Well, part of that wealth is your financial estate and it's your regular estate. And so we want to be part of your total financial life, and part of the estate planning and talking about the next generation is important. So let me first introduce my esteemed colleagues, Priscilla Bram and Chris Gilleski. Thank you. I'm just gonna give you a couple quick statistics, then we'll jump right into it. A Fidelity survey found 56% of Americans reported their parents never discussed money with them. Now 81% agree early education would have been helpful. 82% wish they had talked about money as kids, and only 44% did. And among affluent families, 67% have never spoken to an adult children about finances. And 78% of those admitted these conversations happened spontaneously, didn't really go quite the way they wanted it to go. It just wasn't quite what they had hoped it would be. So a family meeting. Really, really big topic. I mean, this is a wide range of topics, no one size fits all. So basically, what I want to do is just kind of jump into it. We're gonna do a little QA and we'll even have a little lightning round just so you guys are aware of that. So, Priscilla, I'm gonna start with you ladies first. Where or how do you start with to put together a family meeting?

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Well, um, you start by deciding you're going to have one. That's a good place to start. But I think it's incredibly important to uh start with why. Why are you having a meeting? Do you want to provide financial education to your adult children? Do you want to have a conversation about family values that relate to your family wealth? Or do you maybe want to talk about the estate plan? Who gets what and when do they get it? So those those are very different kinds of meetings. The first one uh talking about how to invest. I really question if you're the best teacher for that. Maybe you can recruit your uh wealth or your Morton Wealth advisor to provide investment education. When it's uh family values, if that's the topic, then you are certainly the best teacher because you're the one who experienced accumulating the wealth, you understand what it means to you, uh, you can share your hopes, but I would suggest that you not impose necessarily your values on that next generation. Just share where you came from. And then with regard to uh talking about an estate, who gets what when, uh, again, I I wonder if you're the best teacher or the best uh driver for that meeting. Maybe you'll recruit uh an expert to help you with that.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

But something you've always pointed out in particular is download versus dialogue.

SPEAKER_02 3:18

Yes. In in the first type of a um a family meeting where you're talking about how to invest, that's a download, right? There's going to be very little back and forth on that. If you're talking about family values, that's a dialogue, that's an opportunity to share stories, to invite questions. And um the third one, the estate talk, is again that's more of a download, but it might end with more dialogue.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:46

One thing I just want to say is that family meetings can be either awesome or awful.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

We'll we'll get into that part.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

Part of it is the mindset going into the meeting. Agreed. And we can talk later about kind of the setup for the meeting and so on. But I think it's the start with your why.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Okay. Chris, I know you've been involved in a lot of these meetings, and also you've talked about you were in a series of meetings. Tell us what you learned and what the experience was like.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

I mean, typically a family meeting isn't just around like, hey, here's my assets, here's the values. There's as Priscilla mentioned, there's really three types. There's the educational focused ones, you can share asset values or not. There's the values conversation, and then there's the like, I'm gonna open up my rope and here's everything that I have, and here's how it's structured, and here's where it's going. The education ones are a lot of fun. We've had them with kids, with grandkids. They come into our office. We share with people around how to invest, how we invest, our philosophy on things, um, how to save for retirement, how to maximize your stock options at work, or take advantage of health savings account. That's purely educational focused. Nothing needs to be around here's how much money I've saved, and here's how much you're going to get or not get. The the value is one I I find to be a lot of fun. And again, you don't even need to share dollar figures. I had one with a client a long time ago, and and they said to their kids, they said, listen, money doesn't money doesn't equate to happiness, but it does help ease the struggle. And here's how your mom and I have lived our lives and the decisions that we've made to get us to where we are, and the things that we believe in around money. I prepared this in advance and shared it with you. Now here's your opportunity to talk around your values. And then there's the last part, right? The the I'm gonna open up my robe and say, here's how I have things, here's where they're going, here's how much you get, here's the structure, it's in maybe you're not maybe you have control over it, maybe you don't. It doesn't need to get to that last end, although most of us think about a family meeting and avoid doing it because of that last part. But there's typically three different types of family meetings that you can have.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Now you've also looked at it from the younger generation's point of view. What are the what are the younger ones? What do they think as they walk into this kind of meeting?

SPEAKER_00 6:10

I mean, me personally, again, this is a personal situation. I I just want to know if I'm gonna need to be responsible for my parents or grandparents at a certain point in time in their lives. I'm just curious. It's gonna help me make decisions around my life and my kids and my family to know whether or not I need to prepare for that or not. And I think that a lot of people my age are interested in that type of knowledge because they don't talk about money. Now, I work in this industry, and so we talk about money all the time. It's like, here's how much I have, I'll tell you. Um, but it's very normal for me, and I recognize that a lot of other families are not that way. And you know, we came into a situation five, six years ago where all of a sudden my grandmother never talked about money, never told anybody. I guess it was eight years ago now. Man, COVID really messes up time frame. Um and she was gonna have to move out of her house that she'd been in for 34 years. Nobody wanted that to happen. So my wife and I stepped in. That would have been nice to know well, years in advance before she was 86 years old. But you know, I'm glad that we were in an opportunity to do that. And so I look at it through that lens a little bit. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Priscilla, is it important to define success upfront or whatever success is, or just kind of steer towards certain goals?

SPEAKER_02 7:28

Uh I think it's important to just set goals and and have a vulnerable open mindset going into a family meeting rather than pre-defining what success looks like. When when you go into a conversation and you're here and you have a goal to get there, you tend to just go in a straight line. And if someone else in the conversation is here and someone else is there, you have to get everybody on the same page before you can get over here to the to the place that you have defined as success. So I think it's it's better to say um here's what we want to share, here is um what we hope you will get from this conversation, and um not worry about defining success or failure.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Okay. All right, let's do a little bit of a lightning round. So I'll hit you both for these things. The really big question that everybody always, and you've already addressed it, Chris, is do you want to tell your kids your net worth? What how do people come down on this concept?

SPEAKER_00 8:36

It it's all over the place. I mean, um I've got clients that don't, but then at the same point, they're worried that their kids have a spending problem, but not in the way that you guys might think. One of them is worried that their kid doesn't spend enough to be able to inherit what they do. But it I think that that numbers aren't as important as the conversation itself. Um everybody's different in terms of the stress that money brings onto them and whether or not they have a scarcity mindset towards money or an abundance mindset. So numbers I'm agnostic to. I do think at a certain point in time it's it's helpful to share numbers.

SPEAKER_02 9:15

Um I guess my view is if you if you think you want to talk about specific numbers, be aware that in every family there's uh an imbalance of power. If um if my husband and I have information and we're the ones that have the money, we're the ones that control the money, we have the power. And our adult children have an idea that we're okay, but they don't know the specific numbers. But um if if we approach the meeting in the wrong way by starting with numbers, I don't think the conversation will ever progress past that point. Okay. Um so my suggestion is um think first about what the power dynamics are in your in your family before you decide whether you're gonna talk about numbers.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Okay. So now we're in the family meeting. Do we want to explore the idea of basically saying, okay, we want to start giving you kids some money now so that we can get the pleasure of seeing you enjoy it, you know, and you get some of the benefits of what we what we've accumulated? Or do I really think it's okay that you continue to struggle and you now accumulate money? Okay, let them suck it up. Let them suck it up. Or do we or to say, you know what, you know what, we're we're married to the principle. We're married to the principle of like, no, we worked for it, you're gonna have to wait for it. I want you to go accumulate your own, to the both of you.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

I mean, again, that ranges the spectrum too. Some people said, well, I had to struggle, so so you do too. But then there's others lately, it's it's become more of a conversation where it's like, hey, a certain child or family member that I have could use a little bit of help today. But I want to be fair to the other ones. Even just having a conversation, you know, with your children and saying, hey, you know, child number two could use help today as opposed to as much in the future. You guys are doing it. Fine. Um you'd be amazed how many siblings would be like, yeah, help out that other child that needs it right now.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Um you'd be amazed how many said, no, no, no. I want my share. Am I wrestling? Built differently. I'm not talking from his personal experience since one of my kids is here somewhere. What uh what would you two say are the most common fears people have tr about to have these kinds of meetings?

SPEAKER_02 11:43

Well, I think the biggest fear is the fear of being judged. And maybe the fear is um the if it's fear on the parents' part, it's fear of being judged about why don't you have more? Or if you have enough, why haven't you given away more? Um we we always have a tendency to impose judgment when it's least appropriate. Right? Okay. And and and what I mean by that is um when we're talking about money, that is a deeply emotional discussion. Money equates in so many people's minds with their personal value. And um so when you're when you're thinking about this conversation, I think the fear of being judged is a very, very real fear. And that's why it's important to go in with a mindset that says, um, I'm just going to share where I am and what my story is. And um and I'm gonna let go of whatever happens after that.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

So Chris, I was gonna let you answer that, unless you got a you really want to. So should should this be a conversation about values? Should I be imposing my values upon my children? Is that is that should that be part of the family meeting?

SPEAKER_00 13:06

I mean that's that that's typically one of the things that I see that people want to do. You know, like I if I'm gonna give them this money, I hope that they use it in this way. And these are the values that I want to pass along. You don't actually know how they're going to spend that money until you actually give it to them and see the impact of it. You may agree with that decision or not. But what happens is people end up ruling from the grave because they've never even tested it out to see what decision that child might make. And that's a very dangerous situation to be in, in my opinion, without having the conversation. Like we had a family meeting, and the client said, you know, charitable is one of the things that's very important to us. Your mom and I, we wanted to make sure that we that we lived within our means and that we gave back and made an impact in our community. Both of their kids said, So what did they do? They created a donor advice fund, they gave, they put a little bit of money in it, they gave their kids access to it, and they got to see their kids donate some of that money to charities that were important to them and share that value together as a family, and that was beautiful in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Um Priscilla, you are very charitable and you've worked in many charities. Should the family try to impose their charitable, as what Chris is talking about, impose it upon you know the children?

SPEAKER_02 14:24

I think there's a difference between imposing your values and sharing your values. Uh if you try to impose values, I think what you're gonna do is um uh have problems with the relationship because you're gonna be pushing your values. Whereas if you share them, especially from a place of uh kind of honesty and vulnerability, if you share those values, then hopefully that will be respected and received and um shared back.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

So as opposed to imposing values, I would suggest that you share values.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Because that's when when Chris was talking about ruling from the grave. I mean, remember Warren Buffett said, I want to give my kids enough money to do anything they want, but not so much that they don't do anything at all.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

Yeah, but what's that number?

SPEAKER_02 15:13

Four.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Four million?

SPEAKER_02 15:15

I don't I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

I just but don't forget, ruling from the grave also comes from the point of view but when you have kids that are ill-prepared to receive this money or they don't know how to handle it. I've got a client in particular that said, my children are not going to be able to handle it, and they're adult children. They're just not going to be able to handle this. So there is a certain amount of ruling from the grave, or maybe at least setting up your documents in such a way that at least everybody just has to follow the roadmap.

SPEAKER_02 15:39

And that's kind of I'm not sure if that's ruling from the grave or protecting from the grave.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

Like that's a that's a very loaded one, and I hear I hear that from time to time. I'm not sure that my kids would be able to handle this money. Well, is it handle it? Why are they going to spend it too fast? Are they not capable of making the right investment decisions to treat to strategically have that lump sum of money last for future generations and support the goals and wishes you have? Like which one is it? Because there are different decisions that you can make between spendthrift or properly allocating and investing money for the long term.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

Well, one of the things that someone in a situation like that can do also is um instead of you know giving the money outright to the child that they're concerned about, um, and instead of imposing the responsibility for that child on their siblings, they can hire a professional fiduciary who can who can handle um you know that situation. So that's you you don't have to look just within your family for um for help when someone has special needs.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Not to go off script, but uh Brian Standing, who's the estate tending estate planning attorney that's part of our team, I asked him one time, I said, What's one of the silliest things that you've ever seen somebody try to put in a trust? And he said, Oh, well, you know, I had a client that said, if my daughter gets a tattoo, I don't want her to have any money. I was like, why is that the silliest thing? He's like, well, just imagine how that's gonna play out. She's gonna have to go to the fiduciary of the money every single year, get a full body check to make sure it is it. I was like, oh, that's a good point. I probably don't want to put that in there.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

All right, that that may win. All right. I want to take, we only have a few minutes left. I want to take a few minutes for each of us to tell you a little bit of a war story. And since I'm the moderator, we're all gonna go first. Um basically, I know that each time I've been involved in in family meetings, there's a lot of discussion about who's in charge when I'm gone. Now, if you've got one child, that's kind of easy, but when you've got two or three or more, it becomes a little bit more problematic. For example, is one more able to take care of, you know, following the directions of the financial advisor and of the attorneys, et cetera? Or will the other ones feel, well, wait a minute, I'm being slighted, why can't aren't I involved? You've got multiple children. Well, it's going to be a best majority vote, so two get to to uh gang up on one of them and say, haha, we got we took care of this. I mean, obviously, if you've got documents that have been clearly set forth, at least they shouldn't be able to do go against your wishes. But think about this one: your advanced health care directive. Who do you want being able to pull the plug on you?

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Well, I know you don't have Megan.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

I'm not letting Megan do that. If I get a paper cut, I'm gone. But you gotta realize that, I mean, that's just as important as your advanced health care directive as to who's gonna be in charge. Maybe one child says, I can't let mom and dad go, and the other one says, No, let them go.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

This is a tough one. I mean, who do you have in charge? It depends a lot on the family dynamics. I I've seen some families that have kids that get along, they have these types of meetings and conversations on a regular basis, and there's clearly somebody that they all trust to kind of take it over. You know, I've also seen families where the siblings don't get along, and I've told them listen, you should not put one of your kids in charge. That's going to create uh just a messy situation. You should look for uh a professional fiduciary or some independent person that to navigate this, and who's in charge, that that should be a nice conversation to have because there are a lot of options for people.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Priscilla, have you had to deal with the difficult conversation of unequal distributions?

SPEAKER_02 19:21

Yes. Um I had um a couple uh who had three children. Uh one child was very, very, very successful, had uh gabillions of dollars, much more than the parents did, uh, not married, no children, uh, and wasn't really involved with the family, just had kind of separated himself from the family. The other two children um were married and had children, were very involved with the family and so on. So mom and dad decided, uh, without talking to any of anyone that they would exclude uh the son from the inheritance. And um mom passed away, um dad developed cancer, and on his deathbed, he told his daughter, who was the trustee of his trust, what he had done, what he and his his wife had decided. And she said to him, Oh no, I am not going to tell my brother that he doesn't get any part of the estate. That's on you, Dad.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

So she didn't pull the plug, right?

SPEAKER_02 20:21

At that second, she didn't pull, she did not pull the plug.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

Okay, just want to make sure.

SPEAKER_02 20:26

Yeah, and and and I will tell you that every time I saw this couple, I said, you know, please, please have a family meeting about this because I I I don't think your daughter is going to appreciate the burden that you've put on her. Uh anyway, thank you. Deathbed, he he brought the son in, son responded as you would expect. Right. And uh that family has just never recovered. So even though the conversation is hard during your life, it's much harder as you as you get on later. So I would really encourage you to um to have those difficult conversations. Bring a therapist in if you need to.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

I know we're up on time, Eric. I mean, we can obviously talk about this for hours, but there's a number of ways that we can help.

SPEAKER_02 21:09

Yeah, we've we've barely seconds of just they won't give me 30 seconds. Yeah, they are. Okay. Really fast. Don't have the meeting in a restaurant or a public place because I think that's enough.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

I don't even know how to follow that. I've been saying we barely scratch the surface as you can all see. But as you remember, I said in the beginning that you know we want you to get the most life out of your wealth. Don't be afraid to to reach out to your advisor and to say, can you help? Can we help facilitate it? Can we just give you ideas? There's a lot to talk about here. Thank you all very much for being here. We appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 21:53

Wow.