What happens when parents run out of time to prepare their children to inherit wealth — and then those children have to decide how to prepare their own children? Kristen Heaney has experience on both sides of this equation. She is the founder of In Three Generations, which offers coaching, peer groups and family facilitation for wealthy families. She talks about how her own experiences have informed her work:
What made you become a coach for inheritors?
I came at the experience of inheritance in an unexpected way. My dad was a business owner in the Detroit area — steel processing, serving the automotive industry and beyond — that I was not necessarily interested in. I always knew that I wanted to be a helping professional, so when I went to college was a psychology major.
Then, sadly, when I was a senior in college, my dad was diagnosed with cancer, and it was terminal. He had about six weeks between diagnosis and death. Basically, we had a deathbed conversation where he said, ‘What you don’t realize is that, in addition to the business — which my brother subsequently took over — there are all of these invested assets.’ So, I inherited these assets and also our family foundation, which my dad had just started two years previous.
Because my parents were divorced, I literally was the decision maker. My brother had his hands full with the business that he was stepping into. I knew nothing about investing. But some of the harder parts were how this impacted my sense of self, my sense of identity, my relationships, my path in life. There were not many resources available.
I proceeded with my professional endeavors — I got a master’s in social work with a counseling focus. I got married and had children. As I was preparing myself for roles within my own family, I wanted to figure out how to help my children be more prepared than I was for these roles.
In 2014, I became motivated to shift into working in this area — acting as a coach for family members who are going through similar situations. It’s given me more empathy for the leading generation: how challenging it is to get out in front of all of this.
How did your experience inheriting affect how you approached these issues with your own children?
I focus on these issues every day in my work. But when I have on my family office hat, it sometimes surprises me.
For example, our approach is that when you’re 18, you have the opportunity to be considered for our foundation board. I mentioned this to my 18-year-old son, and he says to me, ‘Wait, remind me again what is the foundation?’
In my mind we’ve talked about this a thousand times, but he may have been 10 or 12 years old when that happened, and didn’t really digest it at all. It reminded me that this is not something that you do once. There’s a cyclical nature to education that is really important.
I hear the voices of my rising generation clients, sharing their frustration about how much is assumed and how the leading generation really doesn’t take as much time as they would hope to educate them. It just it allows me to see the vast crevasse that we need to overcome.
How have you approached teaching your children about investing and philanthropy?
I’ve tried really hard to make sure that they have a role in all of this. From a young age, my husband and I would have them sit through the markets overview presentation that the portfolio manager does at the family meeting. We had them start their own small accounts to learn the time value of money. I want this language that these advisors speak to be more intuitive to them than it was to me.
But I try to think critically about my own instincts, too: How do you pace this in a way that’s not overwhelming to them?
With our foundation, I realize that I’m planning for the future that they’re going to be taking over. They know that we expect them to be engaged. And they know that because their grandfather died young, we have some family assets that it’s our job to steward.
What else have you learned from your own experience that helps you in your coaching work?
This is all a lot harder than it seems. I think people reach for the how to guide, or the three-step process for this: I just want to not raise entitled kids, and I want to prepare my kids for their future responsibilities.
I think, because I do this work, I know how to do it. But when you implement this with your own family members, these are human beings, with life happening in the midst of all of this. And it’s not easy to do — it requires a lot of customization and pivoting.
