Ellen Miley Perry - A Wealth of Possibilities: Navigating Family, Money, and Legacy

A Wealth of Possibilities by Ellen Miley Perry

Copyright 2012 Ellen Miley Perry

Cover and chapter illustrations: Emmanuel Pierre/www.rileyillustration.com

Interior cartoons The New Yorker Collection/www.cartoonbank.com

Egremont Press

Designed by Laura Beers

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanseletronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout prior consent of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-9883789-0-2

ISBN: 9780988378919

Printed in the United States of America.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

For my parents and siblings;

Bruce Frick Miley,

Joan McCoy Miley,

Michael Miley,

and

Susan Miley Lee

and for my dear daughter,

Grace

CONTENTS

Introduction

Family, that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor in our innermost hearts ever quite wish to.

DOROTHY GLADYS SMITH

Ive worked as an advisor to families of substantial financial means for more than twenty years. For the first twelve years, I was primarily a financial advisor to those families. Then, as I found myself drawn more and more into their personal affairs, I gradually shifted focus. I studied Family Systems Theory at the Georgetown Family Center and discovered a new and for me more meaningful calling: helping my clients navigate the unique territory created by the complex combination of family dynamics and substantial wealth.

Ive had the privilege of helping some of the countrys wealthiest families work to ensure that their family is both resilient and sustainable. Ive journeyed with them on their quest to build thriving families. Weve pondered together how to keep their vast financial success from negatively impacting specific family members or tearing the family apart. Weve sought answers to questions like, How do you keep your feet firmly on the ground in the midst of great abundance? What is the meaning of work in the context of our financial means? How do we move from success to significance? And what is the fundamental purpose of our monetary wealth?

Ive seen families through major business transactions, restructurings, and succession to the next generation. Ive been there through failed initiatives, marriages, divorces, births, deaths, and illnesses. Ive overseen estate planning overhauls, near expatriations, prenuptial agreements, and postnuptial nightmares. Ive had a seat at the table through substance abuse, betrayals, interventions, recoveries, and celebrations. The journey has been fascinating and humbling, joyous and tragic.

What Ive learned through these experiences is that wealthy families face the same life challenges as all families. Sure, they have ample resources to bolster or even shield them from certain adverse consequences. But I now believe that these protections (some might call them opportunities) come at a very high price. For every opportunity, wealthy families must also cope with obligation, responsibility, and challenge, not to mention an audience to see them falter or even fail. Whats more, their expressions of fear, vulnerability, concern, or regret often fall on deaf or envious ears.

Wealthy families spend much of their time worrying about, planning for, and attending to their finances. They hire and retain teams of experts to help manage their financial wealth. They spend countless days each year attending to money matters, and much time and thought as to how they will pass that wealth on to others.

In the hubbub of all that attentiveness to wealth lies the crux of a fundamental problem, and the reason I felt compelled to write this book. Few wealthy families devote the same intensity, energy, and commitment to their assetstheir family membersas they devote to their assets. If a family is to flourish for many generations and wealth is to be a useful means for individuals within the family to self-actualize, attain happiness, and achieve their own successes, devotion to human assets is exactly whats needed most. I use the word flourish advisedly to mean something more than personal well-being. In the context of family, individuals flourish if and when they have 1) a strong sense of individual identity, 2) well-defined and pursued interests of their own, 3) the satisfaction of hard work and productivity in life and, perhaps most importantly of all, 4) a strong connection to other family members.

The challenges I describe in these pages are common to many families, wealthy and not. But I firmly believe that wealth is a magnifieran accelerator if you willthat can crank everyone and everything up. Kind people can be kinder when they have financial resources, mean people more malevolent, insecure people may become deeply paranoid, and giving people can be tremendously generous. Tensions that occur in virtually all families are intensified when it comes time to allocate or share family assets. Old hurts and relational complexities have ongoing opportunities to be played out around boardroom tables and with shared enterprises, where tangled family emotional complexities can surface and then fester or thrive.

After working with multigenerational families of significant wealth for so many years, Ive determined that the most important job of the second generation (G2) is to develop human capital with the same energy and intention G1 used to gener ate financial capital. If a family is to avoid the shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations problem often associated with wealth, the second, third, and even fourth generations must commit to the personal enhancement and enrichment of each and every family member. They must work hard to maintain healthy family relationships, use their financial resources to enhance the life experiences and opportunities of family members, fully integrate spouses into the family, and, above all, develop practices and policies that create healthy connections.

The healthiest multigenerational families Ive known have one thing in common: a family member, or group of family members, devoted deeply to the notion of a healthy, connected, committed, and vibrant family. They dont believe that their only job, or even their most important job, is managing the familys financial assets. These leaders acquire training and obtain skills to encourage the robust connectivity of the family in meaningful ways. They imagine a thriving family and then do all in their power to make that dream come true. They apply the same energy and devotion to this dream as entrepreneurs apply to growing financial assets.

There are no silver bullets, however, and the evolution of a family is undeniably complicated. For all the successes and triumphs I will describe in this book, Ive met dozens of families who simply cant achieve the essential ingredients for intimacy and commitment. They cant withstand the anxiety, pain, and stresses of life together, and so they pull apart in one way or another.

During my two decades plus of working with the substantially wealthy, Ive experienced my own personal growth, family evolution, and life changes. I have an amazing and complex family, and it provides the single most important sustenance in my life. Nothing comes close to the joy and deep satisfaction I get from my husband, daughter, stepchildren, and five step-grandchildren. My parents and siblings had all passed away by the time I was fifty, leaving me particularly mindful of the frail nature of our lives. All too often I see families mired in arguments, minor disagreements, and estrangements, and I deeply wish for them reconciliation. I know well the ways in which these problems arise; my family of origin was as prone as any to relational issues. I do, however, have a perspective of scarcity borne on the back of loss that orients me differently than some who still have their original family members. My professional and personal experience gives me a lens through which I can try to help others think about the conservation of their own families, and the healing and eventual thriving they could enjoy.