Customer Reviews

The Dilemmas of Family Wealth: Insights on Succession, Cohesion, and Legacy (Bloomberg)

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Provided flashes of insight and chrystalized our thinking about inherited wealth. Most profoundly it provided us with the idea that inherited wealth is a way to transmit human, intellectual and financial wealth to the our generation and the next generation. Including ways to prepare the next generation for philanthropy and adopting a work ethic. A MUST read if you want to protect your assests from mindless spending and create joy and cooperation around the inheritance process. A very easy read, I read it cover to cover in two sittings.

Before soap operas, people could follow the rise and fall of actual famous families' fortunes. The soaps borrowed heavily from the sagas of wealthy families, stories with the essential elements of any good drama: money, nepotism, jealousy, decadence and conflict. Family businesses are the world's most popular form of corporate ownership, yet few family businesses make it past the second generation. Judy Martel offers case histories and aptly describes the problems associated with family fortunes, but tends to fall short of fully explaining solutions. She repeats some remedies often, such as forming a "family council." And, some remedies seem slight, such as ways to resolve differences over sharing a summer house. We appreciate Martel's emphasis on family values, while wishing this book's solutions were all as solid as the fascinating problems it describes.