Five pieces. In each one the structure is sound, the lawyer is competent, the paperwork is in order, and the family is still stuck.
What is a family office
A family office is set up by the founder and reports to the founder. Everybody else in the family is looked after by it and none of them can instruct it. So when the founder is the one who cannot decide, the office has nobody to ask. Meanwhile its head, who is not family, knows more about the family's position than any member of the family does, and has a job to keep.
Praveen SaankerFounder and Principal Advisor
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Family business succession
So the lawyer is not the delay. The delay is a question nobody will put to the founder, which is what he is called on the Monday after he hands over. His daughter cannot ask it. His auditor works for him. His wife has watched it for two years and decided it is not hers to open.
Family constitution
That is not why most of them fail. A constitution fails when the clause is clear, one brother's son has been hired in breach of it, and the only person entitled to object is the other brother. The instrument works perfectly. Nobody will be the one to use it.
Estate planning in India
The will leaves the shares to the daughter. The shareholders' agreement, signed years earlier, gives her uncle's branch first refusal over the same shares. Nobody read one against the other. The family learns this days after the funeral, from a lawyer none of them chose, and the man who could have explained it is the reason they are in the room.
Family philanthropy in India
Neither knew about the other. Nobody in that family has done anything wrong, and nobody has been put in charge of the giving in sixty years. The register carries name, place, amount and date. It has no column for why, because the woman making each entry was the one who knew.
These are written for a family already inside one of these situations.
