Family Conflicts
If your family is experiencing conflict or if you anticipate an event that may result in some family conflict, you may need the skills and expertise of someone who can bring your family members together to engage in a constructive and healing conversation.
Family relationships can be complicated even in the best of circumstances. No matter how everyone gets along, however, a major life event may strain even the closest family ties. Old sibling rivalries, differing values or beliefs, power imbalances, and unresolved conflicts can erupt without warning and turn life with family into a living nightmare.
Below is a sample of the types of issues that I can help you address:
Estates, Wills, Probate, & Trusts
- Discussing estate plans with loved ones
- Choosing fiduciaries
- Managing finances for a surviving parent
- Unequal asset distribution
- Complex estates
- Family business succession
- Planning for children from a previous marriage
- Addressing special or other long-term needs of a dependent
Validity of will
- Ambiguous language of will
- Lack of capacity of testator
- Exploitation and financial elder abuse
- Reliability of executor
Validity of a trust:
- Capacity of executor of trust
- Undue influence
- Breach of fiduciary duty
- Trust reformation
- Administration of trust
Family Business
The dynamics of family members working together is anything but simple. The family and the business have their own discrete needs and interests, yet family members sometimes have a difficult time achieving a balance between them or keeping them separate. Unfortunately, when household conflicts spill over into the workplace or when work-related issues are brought home, a tremendous strain is placed on family relationships and on the productivity of the family business.
Transforming Conflict conducts family business mediations and facilitated conversations to help family members:
- Separate family issues from those that are about the business
- Maintain trust and cooperation among family members
- Strengthen sibling relationships
- Clarify expectations and values between generations
Some common issues that may be addressed are:
- Communication
- Family issues /relationships
- Compensation
- Dividend distribution
- Succession planning
- Allocation of responsibilities
- Estate planning
- Family/non-family management conflicts
- Working vs. non-working family members
- Ownership planning
Family Property
- Use of property
- How to share property
- Property maintenance (costs, sharing labor)
- Sale of property (decision to sell; timing of sale; sale price; sharing proceeds)
Relationship Conflict
- Estrangement
- Power struggles
- Lifestyles
- Values
- Child-rearing practices
- Politics, religion, and ideology
- Work orientation
- Household maintenance