Family histories create meaningful legacies
Sharing the journey of a family’s wealth can empower future generations
When families think of leaving a legacy, they tend to focus on passing on their wealth and family enterprise. However, there is often a rich tradition of family stories, principles and values that if not passed on, risk being lost over generations.
That’s where family meetings and family histories can play a crucial role in ensuring the transfer not only of family wealth, but of the personal vision and journey behind that wealth.
View this UBS Trending video on the value of family stories and histories
Bringing families together
“Family meetings are so valuable,” says Sarah Salomon, Head of UBS Family Advisory and Philanthropy Services Americas, “because they allow for learning across different generations. We hear so much about the success that created wealth, but little about the journey that led to that wealth—a journey with ups and downs, dead ends and restarts.”
Sarah and her team view legacy as much more than the wealth and personal possessions you may want to pass on to others. Their view encompasses the family you have been a part of and the footprint you have made in the world. This broader view can allow younger generations to see how a family legacy is shaped by individual actions that make up a whole.
We need to remind parents that they learned by trial and error too.
In preparing for these family meetings, Sarah’s team conducts pre-meeting interviews with the extended family, including different generations, in-laws, stepchildren, etc. to start to understand the various perspectives of each member. They then create a non-attributed executive summary and meeting agenda.
Different from typical UBS client meetings, these family meetings are about “eliciting family stories, the inflection points, the things that worked out, the things that didn’t and what was learned through those experiences,” explains Sarah. “It’s also parents remembering their younger selves. There is a predominant trend of trying to protect the next generation from themselves, and we need to remind parents that they learned by trial and error too.”
In Sarah’s experience, families with a common view of their shared family legacy experience more cohesion. If each individual family member identifies how they can contribute, everyone can be a meaningful part of creating the family's shared definition of legacy. “When we're working with families, it's really about encouraging them to have these conversations in order to come together,” she says.
The greatest inheritance
Robert Cocuzzo concurs. He is founder and chief biographer of Legacy Literature, a firm that produces high end biographical histories and life stories of heads of family enterprises. “We're not only capturing their stories, we're trying to bring families together around a shared narrative,” explains Robert.
Robert and his team will spend a year or more having weekly conversations with the family patriarch or matriarch based on questions that are provided ahead of the meetings. These discussions are augmented by additional interviews and research that all form the basis of the books they produce.
“We're also trying to capture not only what happened through their lives, but also the values, principles and the knowledge that they're trying to pass on,” says Robert. “That’s the greatest inheritance—that knowledge—and for others to benefit, you have to pass it forward. Because unfortunately, once it’s gone, it’s gone.”
That knowledge the founders want to pass on is the greatest inheritance.
Having a family become grounded in their shared history and journey helps build trust, says Robert. He notes that current and future generations may not fully realize, for example, how they share the same integrity as those of the Greatest Generation of the Depression era unless they have a chance to read about what their forbears went through.
“By taking possession of the story of the folks that came before them, they're able to move forward with a sense of responsibility to carry on that legacy forward. They actually take ownership of it and they feel empowered by it,” says Robert.
Framing legacies of love
The books and other materials that Robert’s company produce become a resource at family meetings year after year. “What we're seeing families do is start the family meeting by playing the same video every year of how grandma and grandpa got started,” says Sarah. “What was grandpa's early childhood like? How does that differ from his business success? What does that mean for the third generation now?”
Everything is rooted in who they are and how they love each other.
Beginning family meetings in this way, continues Sarah, “helps the family remember that the questions and discussions that follow, some of which they may agree or disagree with, are all rooted in who they are and how they love each other.”
When working with families, Sarah explains, “we're always trying to frame legacy in the context of who you love and how you love them. Memorializing the stories that represent the family’s values is one of the best ways to perpetuate multigenerational family wealth.”
Legacy Literature is included within the UBS Professional Network, but is not affiliated with UBS. Inclusion of Legacy Literature in the UBS Professional Network, and the selection of this firm to brief clients on family meetings and the value of capturing a family legacy is not a recommendation of, or a business referral to Legacy Literature.
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