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It Happens More Often Than It Should
It never ceases to amaze me that after hundreds of posts about the challenges of transitioning wealth from one generation of a family to the next, there are some subjects that I’ve barely even touched upon.
This week, we’ll be looking at one of those, and I have to admit a bit sheepishly that this is long overdue.
And the main reason we’re now here is a fluke confluence of events that happened to put two family situations on my radar on successive days.
There should be some useful ideas coming, so please stick around as we look at family situations that are upended by sudden health issues.
Benefiting from Lots of Examples
The two family cases in question both happen to be ongoing, and I came to learn about them in very different ways.
The first was through a local study group I’ve been part of for a few years, which forces me to keep my professional French skills sharp.
The second came thanks to my role as a Team Project Advisor for participants in the Family Enterprise Advisor (FEA) program.
As I completed my weekly meeting with my team, I reflected on the prior day’s study group case, and realized it’s high time we discussed this topic here.
So I began writing myself the reminder email, and decided to compose a draft title in the subject line.
I began “Sudden Health Issues….”, after which I searched for a verb, and “Threaten” came to mind.
The capitalized first letters jumped off the screen at me, and I could no longer “unsee them”, and then appreciated the gift that they offered.
This is some bad “sh*t” you’d be better off trying to avoid.
A Patriarch with Cancer
The first case involves a patriarch who has been running the family conglomerate for decades, with a relatively tight fist.
His diagnosis was sudden, and the timeline he has left is naturally quite uncertain.
Our study group did not quite seize on the true urgency, and we began suggesting typical steps to bring in the rising generation.
As we debriefed with the advisor who brought us the case, we finally caught on that the family is dealing with days and perhaps weeks, while our proposed interventions were more about months and years.
When you don’t have much time, you need to focus on what needs to be taken care of “right now”, or “yesterday”.
Unfortunately, many of the suggestions we had initially aren’t even feasible, because more important structural issues hadn’t been taken care of early enough.
A Partner Has a Stroke, and Cancer
The second situation, where the advisor team was using the family as a project case, had a different twist.
The octogenarian patriarch was thought to be the most precarious family member when the team first met the family, but there was an unfortunate health event that befell his wife, who’s about fifteen years younger.
She suffered a stroke, and upon investigation, a brain tumour was discovered, and subsequently removed.
As you might imagine, arranging family matters with a certain expected order of demise can get turned upside down in a hurry.
The intervention of the project team ended up being quite timely, as the deadlines they faced did not allow them to pause the work, which they’d likely have done of it had been a “real world” professional intervention.
“We Should Have Started Sooner”
Most families fall into the trap of assuming that they have plenty of time to “get their affairs in order”, so it’s easy to put this work off.
The “good news”, if there is any in such situations, is that a renewed focus is forced upon family members, so this inertia is quickly upended.
However, making decisions on tight timelines, under stress and mourning, is sub-optimal and not recommended.
Thoughts of “why didn’t we do this sooner” are all too common.
The best time to plan is when you don’t actually need to!
The longer you wait, the less good options you have.
Act Before the Sh*t Hits the Fan
Hopefully your family and your clients won’t be the next case of the “sh*t hitting the fan” and having to rush into making decisions and having to get signatures on documents in the hospital.
Advisors have a certain obligation to nudge their family clients into action, but sadly, there’s only so much we can do.
