Publications
Lessons To Be Learned From Failed Celebrity Estates
If you have an Estate Plan in place, this is a good time to review your existing documents to make sure they still accomplish your wishes. Here are the questions you should think about:
Does your Will match your wealth transfer wishes?
Are your assets titled correctly, and have you set up the appropriate beneficiary designation forms?
Have you established and funded all necessary Trusts? …
The Tragedy Of The Commons: How A Life Crisis Effects Family Wealth
“Strategic planning, governance, and business processes take a back seat to the immediacy of the leader’s life crisis and how the crisis will be managed, ignored, or denied by the leader and the stakeholders in the organization. Response to the crisis largely determines the future and well-being of the business and the family.” -Steven S. Rolfe, MD
In most cases, a family leader plays the role of the governor of the engine that is the family wealth. The leader has the personal authority to set agendas and make decisions between competing demands on the common resources of the family. So long as they are able to act in such a way, disputes do not rise to the level of threatening the viability of the family enterprise. In Systems Dynamics there is a name for this situation, The Tragedy of the Commons.