Читать книгу Complete Family Wealth - Keith Whitaker, James Hughes E., James E. Hughes Jr. - Страница 8

This book culls the essence of our prior books: Family Wealth (1997 and 2004), Family: The Compact Among Generations (2007), Cycle of the Gift (2014), Voice of the Rising Generation (2015), and Family Trusts (2016). It also captures insights that we have shared in dozens of articles, white papers, and blog posts, as well as in presentations to hundreds of audiences. We deeply appreciate all that we have learned from our many reviewers, our respondents, and the participants in these events.

Each chapter of Complete Family Wealth connects to others through themes and concepts; each can also be read on its own. Please feel free to pick and choose among them, based on the topics of greatest importance to you and your family.

In Complete Family Wealth, we have sought to present enduring ideas and practices. These are the insights and the activities that we have seen make a truly positive difference in families’ lives over the long-term.

Following are some of these enduring principles, which are reflected more fully in the chapters that follow:

The goal is not “beating the ‘shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves’ proverb” in the sense of keeping only financial capital in the family. Financial capital is important. But references to “the proverb” have caused many readers to think that we advocate attention to qualitative capital for the sake of financial capital. The opposite is the truth.

Though our subject is “family” wealth, this wealth resides in individual family members. Their relationships are crucial, but the health of relationships and the family depends on the prior health of the individuals who are related.

While “governance” (shared decision-making) is important and sometimes overlooked, too much emphasis on governance ends up imposing “forms” on the family under which it cannot “function.” Sometimes it is easier for advisers to hand a family a draft constitution than to help them to live well together. But the former, if ever adopted, should serve the latter.