Family Charter: Building a Sound Governance Foundation

There are many reasons why setting up a family charter makes sense for your family, but a focus should be to clearly articulate guidelines for the future transfer of wealth while reducing internal family conflict. Communication, Communication, Communication. The process is key in formulating the document. No one size fits all, so breaking the topics into chunks to tackle in family meetings by order of importance is more manageable. Don’t try to take an off-the-shelf approach to develop charters or ones that lawyers create. However, a final review by a lawyer might be beneficial. The development of the charter needs to engage the rising generation since they will be the ones impacted by the document. Here is an outline of things to consider.