Complete Family Wealth, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 12Character

History

In the field of family wealth over the past few decades, much effort has focused on developing and promulgating the vocabulary we are sharing in these pages. This vocabulary responds directly to many families' anxiety that their riches will ruin their descendants' lives and so leave future family members both financially and spiritually impoverished.

This anxiety is perennial, as suggested by the persistence (even in the face of contrary empirical evidence) of the proverb “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.” And yet, our vocabulary is new.

What did families do before these new ideas came along? They certainly had advisers, but those advisers—brokers, accountants, and tax attorneys—mainly tended ...