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Prenuptials: Engaged Healthy, Wealthy & Wise

Let’s Talk Family Enterprise Podcast Episode #44

Prenuptials: Engaged Healthy, Wealthy & Wise

Host Steve Legler speaks with Coventry Edwards-Pitt about her third book, Engaged Healthy, Wealthy & Wise, which tells the true stories of wealth inheritors and their significant others, and how they navigated the situations surrounding the prenuptial agreements they were asked to sign by the family’s well-meaning advisors.

[0:26] Steve Legler introduces today’s guest, Coventry Edwards-Pitt, and invites her to share a little bit about her third book,
Engaged Healthy, Wealthy & Wise.
[1:46] Covie frames her latest book in the broader context of the first two: Healthy, Wealthy & Wise and Raised Healthy, Wealthy & Wise.
[3:48] Flipping the usual engagement-related questions on their heads!
[6:04] Covie talks about the pain she heard in the book interviews that led her to see what is broken in the way families of wealth and their advisors tackle the question of engagement and marriage.
[8:25] No one ever really broaches the subject of that process, sharing these stories is a way of alleviating the emotional burden while trying to find a better way.
[10:50] The David and Goliath issue facing young couples beyond losing their sense of agency, loyalty, equality, and unity with each other.
[12:36] Covie shares a story that she calls the gold standard.
[14:10] Covie explains the history of the prenup and how it’s evolved over time.
[16:22] If the strong majority of couples are made up of one inheritor and one not, how can we build a better prenup process so as not to generate discord in young couples?
[17:23] It isn’t about if to prenup, it’s about how. Coie speaks to how an advisor’s role could be modified to better tackle the “how” of prenups.
[19:45] Covie shares best practices and talks about sibling relationships and how they might present particular challenges when it comes to prenups.
[23:12] Agency and autonomy is a new generation goal, Covie shares an example.
[25:20] Covie shares her thoughts on how advisors can better support their families.
[30:28] Covie shares her reading recommendation as well as her advice for advisors.
[35:00] Steve thanks Coventry Edwards-Pitt for sharing so much of what she learned and signs off until next month.
[0:26] Steve Legler introduces today’s guest, Coventry Edwards-Pitt, and invites her to share a little bit about her third book,
Engaged Healthy, Wealthy & Wise.
[1:46] Covie frames her latest book in the broader context of the first two: Healthy, Wealthy & Wise and Raised Healthy, Wealthy & Wise.
[3:48] Flipping the usual engagement-related questions on their heads!
[6:04] Covie talks about the pain she heard in the book interviews that led her to see what is broken in the way families of wealth and their advisors tackle the question of engagement and marriage.
[8:25] No one ever really broaches the subject of that process, sharing these stories is a way of alleviating the emotional burden while trying to find a better way.
[10:50] The David and Goliath issue facing young couples beyond losing their sense of agency, loyalty, equality, and unity with each other.
[12:36] Covie shares a story that she calls the gold standard.
[14:10] Covie explains the history of the prenup and how it’s evolved over time.
[16:22] If the strong majority of couples are made up of one inheritor and one not, how can we build a better prenup process so as not to generate discord in young couples?
[17:23] It isn’t about if to prenup, it’s about how. Coie speaks to how an advisor’s role could be modified to better tackle the “how” of prenups.
[19:45] Covie shares best practices and talks about sibling relationships and how they might present particular challenges when it comes to prenups.
[23:12] Agency and autonomy is a new generation goal, Covie shares an example.
[25:20] Covie shares her thoughts on how advisors can better support their families.
[30:28] Covie shares her reading recommendation as well as her advice for advisors.
[35:00] Steve thanks Coventry Edwards-Pitt for sharing so much of what she learned and signs off until next month.

Let’s talk family enterprise explores global ideas, concepts and models that help family enterprise advisors better serve their family clients, brought to you by family enterprise Canada. All views Information and opinions expressed during this podcast are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of family enterprise Canada.

0:34
Hello and welcome to another episode of The let’s talk family enterprise podcast. My name is Steve Legler. And it’s great to be your host once again. Our topic this month sits at the intersection of love and family wealth. And I’m sure we’ve all heard of situations where this has caused some drama. Our guest today is Coventry Edwards Pitt. She’s the Chief Creative Officer at Ballentine partners, a strategic wealth management firm located near Boston, Massachusetts. Covie’s latest book, her third, has just been published. And if it’s anything like her first two, you’ll want to get your hands on a copy. The book’s title is engaged, healthy, wealthy and wise. And it’s full of true stories about how inheritors of wealth and their significant others have navigated this territory. There’s a lot of ground for us to cover. So let’s say hi to our guest and kick things off Coventry Edwards Pitt thanks for joining us today. Welcome to the let’s talk family enterprise podcast.

1:34
Thank you, Steve. I’m very happy to be here.

1:37
So I mentioned that this is your third book. And they all start with one word and then healthy, wealthy and wise, can you just give us a quick run through of the first two and what the audience was so that we can be properly in the right context for what you’ve already done?

1:53
Sure. So my first one was raised healthy, wealthy and wise, and it’s really aimed at parents attempting to raise children amid wealth or abundance, so that they will not be in any way demotivated. By the wells, but instead we’ll go on to live grounded content, self fueled lives, and I wrote that based on interviews I conducted with kids who were had been raised in those circumstances, but And sadly, you know, unfortunately, the statistics do tend to make that a bad person and which is why I wrote the book to focus on the positive stories, but went on to live very content, happy life, so I just asked those people. What did you hear from your parents that allowed you to become the person you are today? And that book summarizes those lessons. And then my second book people responded to that book. I think they really love the stories, they like positive focus. And so I then wanted to use that positive format and story based format based on real people and turn the lens on a another huge topic in our field which is aging and not only how do I use my resources hopefully to age well and have a vibrant later life myself, but how do I make sure that I don’t in any way leave my heirs a problem when I’m no longer here? You know, the year I’ve amassed all this good fortune in my life, but what am I really leaving if I were to look down, you know, 30 years from now and see what my wealth has wrought in my family, would I be happy with that? So it’s really about interviewing people at later stages in their life about how they’re living while themselves and staying engaged and staying motivated and purpose driven, but also how they’re then taking the important steps to plan well for when they won’t be here so that their family can continue to thrive and have positive relationships and not be sort of split apart by contention over inheritance. So that’s that one and then that brought me to this one. engaged, which is really sort of the third very important I’d say very little, looked at, sadly, very little looked at issue in our field, which is that moment when inheritor meets the one, and it’s from the perspective of that couple, I think our industry, unfortunately tends to look at that from the perspective of the wealthy family. And oh, this young inheritor has told us that they have met someone and they want to marry them and what can we do as a wealthy family? Should we talk about prenup? Should we talk about onboarding all of this stuff in the sort of the Nexus and the focus of the conversation is around bringing that person into the wealthy family? And I wanted to sort of turn that on its head and instead say, amid all of this swirling, you know, wheels whirring into motion within our wealth advising industry, there’s a young couple in love and what does it feel like to be that young couple? And how do they actually handle navigating this terrain in a way that sets them on the course for a good, hopefully very long lived wonderful relationship?

5:04
Wonderful. So I love the fact that you, you know referenced our industry and how we treat these situations because the audience the main audience, for this podcast, is the family enterprise advisors who in Canada have taken this FEA program which has been around for over a decade now and there’s getting close to 500 of us, and we all come from different fields. But we often have that perspective of the Now Generation of the wealth creators are the ones who are in charge of it now. And so there’s always been sort of a go to is well, how do we protect that generation and so the prenup is sort of like the default that it has become the default. But one of the things we’ve learned in the course that we took to get this designation is we have to learn to work together and not just on the financial wealth. So this this whole prenup thing are the default go to this is best practice. This is what we do. Oh, so they’re getting married. Oh, I guess we need a prenup. You’re calling that whole thing I guess into question of it.

6:12
I am yeah. Well what happens is when I talked to about 50 people, including 22 couples, all of whom are still in their first marriages. You know, these people ranged in age from 30s to 70s. And I asked very open ended questions you know, they all the focus of all the discussions were about at this tender time in life when they first met when they first were married when they first were having children. And so you find when you ask couples and I really felt like I was on hallowed ground, you know, talking to people many of the times that I was having both members of the couple on the phone together and I could hear them sort of play off each other. But I asked him questions like tell me how wealth first showed up when you met, you know, how did it first come out? How did you learn that your significant other came from wealth? How did it come up around your marriage? How did it come up when you were discussing parenting? When you ask those open ended questions, particularly the middle one around marriage what you hear coming back at you is unbelievable stories remembered in detail sometimes from 35 years ago about how painful a prenup process was there were still tears. There were still hard feelings about how something had happened. And I just learned from asking those questions and hearing how raw these memories still were. But something has gone wrong with how our industry tends to approach this topic, which you know, based on everything I’ve read up until I did these interviews is you know, this is a checkbox item. It’s very normal, motionless, all of this stuff. I’m sure we’ve all heard. You then hear the actual response, which is this is still emotion laden. And it just caused me to have a lot of insights about what’s broken about the typical process. And what we as advisors can do to actually try our best to ensure that we don’t inflict harm on these young couples. And so I share stories. We can get into more detail if you want to hear about that. I’m happy to share.

8:21
So you talk about asking these open ended questions of these couples, and I can’t help but think that for a lot of these couples, this was the first time anyone ever asked them about this subject. Is my hunch right on that.

8:36
I think you’re right. Yes, I think you’re right. And I think that’s actually part of why some of the emotions are still very raw. And I was honestly I was worried in some of these situations that I didn’t in any way want to create pain for a couple to have to remember this. But I think that what I really tried to say was share with me the story so I can share it with others. You know, if there were things that were painful or were not good about this helped me help our industry understand what needs to change. And I think that there was a sense of real relief that I heard from people and almost like a, a duty they were in parting, you know, to me, like you need to tell people you need to tell people these things. And I also got the sense back to what you were saying, Steve, that really our industry is operating to serve the Now Generation. I completely agree with you and what that ends up meaning is that often the people I was speaking to feel like they are alone sort of fighting a fight against an entire industry. You know, the attorney, the adviser the parents, and so I think there was this sense like you can share these stories and help us not feel alone. You know, if someone were to make a lot of people said I wish I’d had this book. I wish I’d had this 30 years ago. So I felt a real sense of obligation to get the word out. Once I heard this, these these stories share with me

10:10
well I imagined it was probably quite cathartic. And just like anyone who then realizes they went through something, let’s just call it politely suboptimal, and they want to try and help other people to avoid feeling that and the way you describe it’s really not a fair fight. I’m just picturing David and Goliath here. Here’s this young couple. And it’s not only the family and the senior generation of the family, but it’s all those well paid experts around them that are saying you have to do this. Well. This is just what we do. And it can certainly cause some problems. I wonder I mean, you focused on the ones that had good results. I’m sure someone could write a book where they could find places where where the prenup was the undoing of couples.

10:59
Yes, I’m sure that’s the case. And you know, there was a woman I interviewed her name is Laurie Israel, and she has written a wonderful book. I encourage people to read it called the generous prenup. And she agrees with this concept. She I think initiated this concept that it’s not that the prenup itself is horrible. It’s that the standard process when typically the prenup is brought to the table by someone other than that young couple, you know, she calls the shadow parties, but there’s someone an actor at play who has their own agenda. And they put that on the table. And she goes on to talk about what’s so broken about that. But she’s very clear in her case in that book that she thinks the typical prenup process that follows that flow does increase the likelihood of divorce and you know, I’m not surprised because when I talk about is how the prenup process as is typically done, interferes with some critical things between that couple, you know, their sense of agency, their sense of loyalty to each other, their sense of equality with one another, their sense of unity. And if you can imagine, you know something interfering with those things within a couple that’s likely destructive. And I go on to talk about not only how people made it through that interference and how they emerged stronger on the other side, but also there is one couple that was like we loved our prenup. And they were the exception that proves the rule. And what’s interesting is in their situation, those four factors were not harmed because they had both inherited out right. They still maintained a sense of agency. They felt like they were in control. They were unified in that decision. There were a lot of it was like threading the needle through the array of circumstances that may that be a positive experience for them to share their story as well as one final story about a couple that went through a semi more regular we would all view prenup process except there were some critical differences. And that’s sort of like the gold standard best practice that I hold up where they went through a mediated process. And there’s a lot more detail but they ended up coming through feeling much better about it and feeling like they were on the same side of the table. And they were able to still create things that help them feel like they were investing in their marriage and unifying their assets together and building something together versus being perennially separate, etc. But there’s a lot there’s a lot more detail in there.

13:23
So a lot of times I guess these prenups that arrive as something that is expected or arrives from out of the blue, that can upset the applecart in a relationship. It’s often where there’s a situation that we call in the industry, sometimes fiscal unequals. Right so that there is a family where there’s a lot of wealth and someone marrying in who’s coming from a different lower socio economic background. And I remember when I heard you speak about this at FFI back in October, you were talking about the fact that prenups when they first started were designed to sort of protect the lower level person and that they’ve changed over time to protect the wealthier partner. Is that am I remembering that correctly? Yeah. You know,

14:14
it was interesting when I was researching this, if you think you know, the concept of a premarital contract or a contract within marriage is you know, goes back to the dawn. of time, pretty much. I mean, there’s various religious traditions. But what’s interesting is if you really look at what those things tended to be, you know, picture back when women had zero rights, you know, and a husband would be killed on the battlefield. If there hadn’t been some documentation in place. That woman couldn’t own her house. She probably couldn’t keep the children you know, all of this stuff. And so, a lot of the historical examples of a marital contract were designed to bestow rights upon the party that came into the marriage naturally with fewer rights or less, more or less. And what’s interesting is we have now it’s obviously not done, it’s gone exactly the opposite. Going all the way. Exactly. What is interesting is if you just Google prenup, these days, at least in the States, you hear a lot like oh, a lot of young couples are doing prenups it’s becoming much more popular. It’s not just for people with wealth. What I find interesting about that is a lot of those are going back to that more traditional concept. A lot of the younger couples pursuing Prenuptial agreements are doing it to protect their party, their their spouse, from either creditors coming after them after death. It’s really a generous act rather than a protective defensive act. And but within our industry, circles around the wealthy party and the wealthy family, it is still very much a risk mitigating act to ensure that a marriage does not end up in wealth dissolution and and that is very much perceived by the party coming in with less money. And that’s part of what creates this issue with equality. Everyone I spoke to kind of knows even the people who even the the coming in spouse who came from less money, who understood him was kind of on board with the concept of a prenup because they’ve seen it in movies and they all have this understanding. Yeah, no, I get it, you know, the wealthy people need to protect their money. And I just thought that’s so interesting that that’s essentially the assumption that our industry has created. And what’s interesting on back to the fiscal unequals issue, the majority the strong majority, almost 80% of the couples that I interviewed, were couples that would identify themselves as one being an inheritor coming from wealth and one not. And so, I come out saying, you know, that is by and large the norm that a person who comes from a wealthy family ends up finding a partner who doesn’t and so we need to really look at that, you know, that’s the norm. What are we doing with that process so that we don’t create discord in those couples.

16:57
So I’m guessing that that this is not a case of like to prenup or not to prenup it’s more of well, if you have to do it, do you have to do with how are you going to do it? It’s more the nuanced area and I think a lot of the way the general industry is going serving wealthy families is towards not just looking at the structural legal solutions, but looking more at the human side. of things. And so your book, I guess, is targeted towards moving that needle even further in that direction. Am I correct?

17:31
Yes. You know, I basically say I truly think the reason the prenuptial was put on the table, you know, 90% of the time is because it’s seen as best practice, best practice defined as wealth preservation. And I say and having been informed by all these interviews, we need to broaden as I agree with you, the industry is going this direction, but let’s do it even more particularly around this marriage and prenup issue. Let’s broaden the definition of both best practice and risk mitigation to include the human elements. So you know if every advisor had to go into a discussion around a prenup, and not only say yes, a prenuptial agreement might help you preserve your dollars to the nth degree. But also they would have to disclose the human risks involved. But it might create some tension within the marital relationship or it might create some tension between you know the person coming into the family and the in laws or between both sets of in laws or, you know, if they disclose the human risks. I think it would be a very different conversation. What happens right now is those human risks are generally just left out of the discussion. And I think that that is a disservice to our clients.

18:45
Well, the human side of a lot of decisions has historically been sort of assumed that Oh, that’ll just take care. Of itself with all sorts of legal agreements and people go and see their advisors. And they’re told this is what to do and okay, they sign it and well, what about the family? Oh, it’ll all just fall into place and as we know, for the first days and weeks and maybe months that does work, but eventually the human side does potentially have a reaction. And that’s something we’re trying to get out ahead of, and that’s what our industry I think is going towards. There were some stories I think when I heard you present, about situations where, let’s say the oldest child or one of the children in a family did the prenup and then a sibling later on was getting married. And they had a hard No. And and then it was like, okay, you don’t do the prenup, and then you end up with a situation where you have some of the offspring that are in a prenup. And others that manage to wiggle their way out of is that a common situation?

19:52
You know, I don’t necessarily speak to that specific set of circumstances though. I’ve certainly heard of that. And there certainly was a story I shared that was a hard No. And that was more about the couple’s discussion between themselves and the type of marriage they wanted and the sense of unity they wanted in their parents and a feeling like the signing the prenup would disrupt that and essentially eventually being willing to forego the inheritance in order to not have to introduce that dynamic into their marriage but what I will say is I think sibling relationships are challenging. I hear about this a lot in terms of people don’t necessarily feel free to do something that is different than what their sibling has done. And what I would encourage families to do is to allow for autonomy and choice among multiple children. So I share a couple of sort of best practice from the Now Generation as you put it from the wealth generating generation perspective. What I view is best practice around this issue which is, you know, informing their children informing them that a prenuptial is a thing you can get, and then giving them real agency and autonomy and saying, you decide, you know, you and your partner decide together and we don’t care if you child and your partner. Do it this way and your child and your partner do it. This way. I think there’s a whole other theme in this book, which is I think sometimes our industry, conflates togetherness with best practice wealth preservation in a way that goes beyond what is necessary. You know, you don’t actually need to work in lockstep together. To preserve wealth. Well, in all cases, and you don’t actually even need wealth at all, to have wonderful, happy family moments of togetherness. And what I saw from all these interviews is there is a just natural, generational pull toward autonomy. From your siblings from your cousins, a drive to be able to with your own partner and your own nuclear family, define a life of your own making. And I heard stories of people saying this is so ironic because we’re struggling right now to separate from this you know, situation where we’re sort of locked in with other family members. And this system that we’re trying to get out from was devised, you know, 35 years ago for that exact reason, so that that generation could separate from their other family members. And so I just sort of say like, if this is normal, and and there’s a lot of statistics about how normal it is, you know, 98% of kids who have grown children end up firing their families advisor, if it’s normal for people to want to go their own way. Let’s just embrace that as normal and help people in that process versus sort of stigmatizing it and saying, it’s really terrible for people to do something different than what their sibling is doing. Or you know, I’m saying,

22:56
it comes down to like so many things. If it’s talked about, well in advance and openly and transparently and people have some agency and some ability to contribute to decisions that are being made for them. Things go better when they sort of arrive at the last minute and they’re imposed from above. Things don’t go as well.

23:19
Yes, you know, and one of the best practice prenup stories I share is from it’s exactly following that, that set of facts that you’re describing where this was a you know, a sixth generation family and there’s a very large pot trust essentially. And so all of the younger members that family were told in their teens that they would need to have a prenuptial just around that trust. And so one of the stories I share is a woman who was told that in her teens, and so when she met her partner in her early 20s, she just said it, you know, outright within like a first several dating and she’s like this is probably going nowhere. So let me just put this on the table, you know, and if it kind of scares them away, it scares them away. And what I think was so brilliant about that is that she in doing that gave her partner agency he then choose do I care do I not care and it also meant that everything that followed have their relationship building after you know, the next five to seven years or whatever, before they were engaged, even officially, was under that premise. So everyone knew what they were doing there and they got to build a foundation under the appropriate premise. So I think that that was another wonderful story of finding a way to preserve agency and choice for both partners, which she was able to do by virtue of telling him as early as she did,

24:45
because she knew about it well enough in advance and she felt comfortable talking about it. And so often the problems come from people not having the courage to have the discussions or keeping things hidden longer than they otherwise probably should. Exactly. Our audience, as I mentioned, is mostly advisors who work with families, families of wealth, family enterprises, families who have a family business. I’m wondering other than buying your book and giving a copy of it to clients. What are some other ways that us the people who advise families, how can we use your work in order to help families have better outcomes?

25:28
Well, I really appreciate the questions do you and I’d say, you know, after I wrote this book, I started to realize there’s a whole talk in here just for advisors because I came away from this research with a list of at least like seven to 10 things that I will never do the same as an advisor because I was one of what I heard. One is around this whole pre national discussion, you know, I’ll never bring it up as you know, emotionless check the box ever again. But also other things that are you know, not overwhelming. You know, there was a lot of stories about young people struggling to individuate because the family office kept offering them help, you know, we’ll deal with all your, okay, we’ll do all this stuff. And they’re still you know, 15 years later, feeling like I don’t need I don’t know how to do the things that my other adult friends know how to do. And the list goes on and on. So what I’d say is, I encourage advisors to read this book and having a question in their mind about, wow, what do I feel like I need to change about my own practice, based on what I’m hearing from these people, because I really think the interviewees I spoke with were sharing their stories, in many ways is a big message to all of us. About how we should change some of what we do to respond so that our actions are informed by how they land on this inheriting generation.

26:51
So a little bit of self reflection, yes for having read the book or read some of the stories in the book. And realizing that oftentimes, even though we are ostensibly here to help, we are actually part of the problem.

27:05
Yeah. And you know, I think we’re all good people, right. I mean, I think all of us are well intentioned, and I think we’re trying, many of us are drawn to this work to help families and to help people and what I learned from these these inheritors, I spoke with his it’s very hard to help them when we’re focused only on what is helpful to their parents. That that is basically not the same question. And we sometimes conflate that question because we say it just look at the language you use. We help families quote unquote, what does that mean? You know, who is that client who is ultimately being benefited? In most instances, it’s the wealth generating parent or the older parent who is paying, you know, and that tends to mean that these younger people feel like they’re not really their interests are not really the ones that are being that are at the focus of the people in the mix. And I think that they’re right, so I think we can help them by trying to keep that in mind.

28:05
That whole who is my client question is ever present, and it’s part of what we learned in the program, that the family is the client. That’s easy to say, it’s not always easy to actually do. Right, right. Yeah, the book, I guess it’s chock full of true stories of people that you interviewed, and so it’s not full of data or anything technical. It’s really stories that people I guess, as we circle back to where we started, we’re kind of happy to finally be able to talk about and so there’s some genuineness that comes from the stories, and I guess you learned a lot asking these questions.

28:44
Yes, and I say back to the lens, you know, not only was the lens squarely on this inheriting generation, which I think is somewhat unique, but there was equal attention paid to the person marrying into the wealthy family. And so you know, I had both partners on and it was really interesting, you realized and I realized asking these questions that the these young people who are marrying in are almost never asked, How did this go for you? You know, what did this feel like for you? What felt good, what didn’t feel good? How did you feel as a as a partner in a relationship with this person you love? And when you ask those questions, I mean, I heard all about how alone, the person feels back to the prenup discussion. You know, one thing that said, you know, you’re just told to go find a lawyer. She’s like, you know, I lead a very successful life. I have a successful career. You know, I’m in my 30s I’ve never had to go just find a lawyer. People say that like it’s normal. And, you know, there’s just a lot of, it’s just an eye opening. It was just generally eye opening to hear the perspective of people we tend not to ask, how has this gone for you and how did this impact your life?

29:57
Well, I guess you have to care first of all, so thanks for caring enough to give us some stories that can help us all understand that there is a whole other side to this and those those marry in a combi. This has been great. Unfortunately, we’re getting to the end of our time together. So as usual, we’re going to wind up with a couple of final requests before we wrap up. So I need to ask you for one book recommendation, something that you’ve read that you’d like others to know about. And then the last one will be one piece of advice from one experience advisor who works with families to others who are also working with families. So can we start with a book recommendation?

30:35
Sure. I read a lot of books in the research in my literature review for this book, because we have a lot of smart people in our field, and I definitely didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. And I’ve quoted from a number of other people’s wonderful books, but I’d say one of my favorites that I read in preparation for writing this book was by Christian Heaney. Is he a any why it’s called in three generations. And it’s a story it’s sort of a family business succession story, but what’s interesting is it’s based it’s the structure as a parable. So it’s I would say it’s informed by her own personal experience. It’s perhaps loosely based on her own personal experience of being an inheritor in a family business situation. But it’s because of this sort of parable nature. It’s very deep. I found it to be one of the most spiritually deep books that I’d read that touches on our space, and it’s ultimately very positive. So I recommend that one that is a good one. And the one piece of advice I’d say is kind of back to what I was saying before recognize the really significant role. We all play in these human dynamics with our clients and lift up the perspective of these younger people a little bit more in all of our work. You know, I’ll give you one specific example which is that you know, often we are asked by the wealth generation wealth generating parent, oh, where there’s a fear expressed, oh, my child has gone and met this person. And I don’t know how I feel about that person. And I feel like you know, maybe my child is changing as a result of this person. There’s a lot of fear and loss of control that we hear. When in reality when you hear from the perspective of these young people, it’s normal for young people to go and individuate in their life. And what I found is the norm is that they often find a partner who almost acts as the mirror that reflects back to them the self they want to be that both partners basically find in that other life partner, the person who helps them come back to the self they want to be, and often that looks different than the person they felt they were when they were in their home family as a child, and the parents often view that individuation as threatening, or view the partner is someone who’s changed in their child, when really the child is just becoming themselves and how wonderful they’ve met someone who helps them do that. And I think if we sort of can approach all of our work with the wealth generation, wealth generating generation, through the lens of understanding what these young people are saying, we can really help those parents you know, when I’ve now been able to take these voices back to my work with the parents, I have helped parents understand what their kids are thinking. And I think it’s actually been very beneficial for parent child relationships to be able to help help parents understand the perspective of these younger people.

33:36
And we can and probably should do a better job of advocating for the, for this quieter voices in families to bring that to the other generation because they are sort of disadvantaged from the go and I think in terms of mitigating that, you know, the next generation changes advisors, I think, if we recognize this and start to get in front of it and advocate for them, we’re certainly helping the family and we’re helping ourselves long term to keep those clients.

34:08
I think that’s so true, you know, question I asked, which actually, I think comes from the voice of the rising generation. So, you know, Jay and Keith and Susan, it was, you know, does this advisor stand for me, you know, I think, right? I think many sadly, many inherited chores and their partners would say, No, you know, and that’s not good. Of course, you want to replace that person.

34:30
We need to we need to change that for everybody’s benefit. You know, when you were giving your book recommendation, I was smiling ear to ear because I know Kristen and consider her a very good friend and trusted colleague. And when I read her book, I had just met her and I immediately went and wrote an Amazon review with five stars for it. So you can go check that out. We’ll put a link to to Kristen’s book. And if you go to Amazon, you’ll see that there’s a five star review from Steve Legler from a few years ago, so we did not rehearse this but it’s it’s funny how this is a small world and it’s amazing to be able to connect with great people in it to do these podcasts. So, thanks again. Covey for this has flown by. Thanks for joining us and sharing your expertise with our audience.

35:17
Thank you, Steve. I really appreciate it. What a small world it is.

35:21
Yes, it has listeners. If you haven’t already subscribed, please do so make sure you never miss any of these monthly episodes. Thanks again, everyone for joining us. I’m Steve Legler. Until next time,

35:35
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