With a little forethought and tact, challenging family issues can be resolved before they escalate into real problems.
No family is perfect. Even in the most harmonious situations there are bound to be times when misunderstandings occur, members of different generations disagree or challenging issues arise.
Although individual family members may have conflicting views, most will share a common aim: to decide what course of action is best for the family and work together to achieve it. By remembering this, and by following a few straightforward guidelines, many quarrels can be dealt with before they become major problems.
- Consider allocating different advisers to different members of the family, so each person feels they have someone to act as their advocate. This is particularly helpful for younger members, who need an adviser reasonably close to them in age and outlook.
- Appoint a trusted person from outside the family to chair family meetings. People will feel freer to speak honestly.
- Don't try to resolve difficult issues in a family meeting. Allow the person's view to be heard, briefly, but then take the issue into a private environment to prevent exchanges becoming too heated.
- When a serious situation arises, such as a member of the family suffering from an addiction, consider requesting that a trusted adviser talk to the individual rather than relying on the head of the family to do so. This enables family relations to remain cordial, while the issue itself is tackled effectively.
"Your advisers have a key role to play in ensuring good communications within the family," says Chris Kenny, director at Smith & Williamson. "They should devote plenty of time to getting to know the history of the family and all its members, to help them anticipate issues and manage them appropriately."
Your advisers should be skilled at helping individuals understand the likely consequences of a particular course of action, and its impact on the wider family. They should be prepared to mediate where there are difficult personal circumstances – such as where different branches of the family do not get on but are joint beneficiaries of the same trust. And areas such as succession planning, which are a common cause of disputes, must be handled with sensitivity and tact, to ensure all parties are comfortable with the outcome.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.