Our Services

We tailor our services to meet the needs and goals of our clients. We therefore offer no off-the-shelf recommendations or solutions.

Instead, we aim to clarify and realize the family's vision of the business or governance structure. Similarly, we work with wealth managers, trust officers, insurance professionals, and financial and legal advisors to enhance and extend their client relationships.

Depending on the family's or advisor's situation, desires, and needs, we design and deliver services in the following areas.

From Roles to Rules: Facilitating Estate & Governance Plans

Most serious estate planning and family governance problems stem from emotional issues, unprepared successors, warring beneficiaries, and difficult family dynamics. From Roles to Rules helps families create good outcomes in the presence of these factors.

Our approach identifies the positive and negative effects of family roles on people's professional and financial lives. Then we help family members to capitalize on the positive and temper the negative effects, and to develop new business and governance structures. These structures support decisions and behavior based more on legal and business rules than on family roles. We also help advisors to address family issues in ways that preserve the family's wealth and relationships.

We work with testators and families directly, through advisors, or as team members on planning or plan implementation, or both. As needed, we provide interpersonal, psychological, and managerial expertise to help clarify roles, develop rules, and create viable business and governance structures.

Roles & Rules Training & Education

Our training and education in Roles and Rules conveys an understanding of family dynamics in estate planning and family governance to testators, families, attorneys, trust officers, and other concerned parties. This understanding prepares them to address issues that undermine the plan and the smooth transfer of assets. Essentially, this training shows how to:

• Recognize the Rules Crisis in succession and estate planning and family governance
• Gauge the impact of family roles on business, financial, and legal situations
• Discuss and consider family dynamics in useful ways
• Establish business Roles and Rules in situations that call for them
• Help the family move toward a sound business and governance structure

Roles & Rules Consulting & Case Review

Our consulting services focus on the needs of advisors and fiduciaries through one-on-one or small-group coaching, case analysis and review, or a combination of these activities. We support advisors at any stage of the planning or asset-transfer process and help them to:

• Understand a family and its business and governance challenges
• Develop a nonjudgmental viewpoint and stand apart from the family drama
• Use objective language to gain insight and foster clarity
• Establish a more trusting and productive advisor-client relationship
• Move the process forward in ways that best serve the client's and family's interests
• Recognize hopeless situations and limit the damage they can produce

Facilitating Keep-or-Sell Decisions for Families

We help families to seriously evaluate this important decision which is too often made solely on financial considerations or preconceived notions. When a family considers selling a business or a major asset, we provide support by using Roles and Rules to do one or more of the following: 

• Evaluate current owners' readiness for sale versus continued involvement
• Profile successors' preparation and skills
• Assess—and mitigate—the risk of post-sale problems
• Define a durable ownership and management structure
• Develop fair plans for valuation and distribution of the proceeds
• Facilitate the transition to new owners and management

Analyzing Purchase Decisions for Potential Buyers

Despite rigorous pre-sale financial analysis and due diligence, purchasers often find that family businesses fail to yield the expected post-sale performance and value. Such failures are usually rooted in family and ownership conflicts or in faulty management structures.

We assist prospective owners and investors in family business purchases, buyouts, mergers, and public offerings by using Roles and Rules analysis to:

• Evaluate the business structure as it has developed over the years
• Illuminate the true role of the family and its relationships in the business
• Gauge the future of the business if the family sells outright or partially
• Assess the viability of the deal and likely outcomes of alternative deal structures
• Recommend useful provisions and ownership and management structures

Value-Added Services for Financial Institutions

We help trust, wealth management, private banking, insurance, and brokerage professionals to provide greater levels of service, differentiate themselves in their regulated markets, and add value for referral sources. Our services for these professionals support their efforts to:

• Ignite clients' interest in estate planning and family governance
• Initiate and navigate conversations about clients' most sensitive concerns
• Unfreeze the process when clients go in circles, documents remain unsigned, or someone threatens to sue
• Strengthen solicitation efforts, invigorate referral networks, and boost market awareness
• Increase asset retention during intergenerational transfers of wealth