The Married Couple Within a Family: In Harmony, Through Quiet Years

In many wealthy marriages, one partner tends to hold more wealth than the other, or to have created more of it within the marriage. In the past, this was usually the role played by the man. But as the times and society have changed, today it is just as often the woman who plays it. Whichever the case, both partners must reckon with the friction that a gap in wealth can bring.

In most situations, they have to work through this difficulty on their own. There are plenty of marriage counselors out there, but few feel equipped to help a couple navigate the thorny problem of a financial imbalance. It is not an easy subject to face head-on, so how should a couple meet the challenge? Two elements are key to overcoming it successfully:

Attend actively to your partner, and cultivate empathy for one another. Both partners need to attend to each other’s feelings and needs, and make the effort to see things from the other’s point of view. Empathy helps deepen mutual understanding and ease the pressure that a financial gap can create.

Let both partners feel self-sufficient and capable of independence. Both should possess the capacity to stand on their own, achieving self-sufficiency through their own effort. In this way each can keep their confidence within the relationship, and together they can face life’s challenges.

Attend actively to your partner, and cultivate empathy for one another.

This is, of course, the cornerstone of any relationship. And so, at times, it is actually a good thing to avoid talking about money in the early stages of a romance. Not discussing financial matters with a future partner allows your relationship to develop and deepen on the basis of each other’s inner qualities, rather than on the wealth you have or might one day have.

In the same way, relying on your own income and beginning to live independently is a positive choice. For the individual it is an experience of growth, one that shows you are capable of supporting yourself. And for a couple it is of great benefit too, for it will help you learn how to make decisions and manage wealth together.

Most crucial of all is to be sure you value every contribution the other makes. The most important contributions are usually not confined to money alone. When facing a financial imbalance, putting yourself in the other’s place becomes the key to working through the problem. Attend at all times to each other’s needs and understand each other’s position, and only then can your relationship grow more harmonious and more fulfilling.

Let both partners feel self-sufficient and capable of independence.

The true foundation of self-sufficiency lies in coming to know and discover your own strengths through work, good relationships, and communication. To handle a financially unequal relationship successfully, you must first be clear about your own situation: understand both what you have and who you are.

Each spouse should have a full understanding of the family’s financial situation. This may mean doing some independent study of investing, attending seminars, or sitting in on the family business’s meetings. Both partners should also make sure they can communicate directly with each other’s financial advisors. Having such relationships is essential not only to both partners’ confidence, but also so that, should one of them ever run into trouble, the other is not left in the dark.

Beyond these two key factors, we have found the following practices helpful for couples confronting the challenge of financial inequality:

1. When on holiday, honor both partners’ families of origin rather than focusing only on the wealthier side. This helps deepen understanding and affection between the two families.

2. Face the issue of financial inequality proactively, rather than avoiding it. Open your heart, communicate with your partner, and seek solutions together.

3. Talk with other family members — at a family meeting, for instance. They may have valuable insight and advice on the subject, and can help break through a reticence long maintained.

A financial gap can give rise to a common problem: the partner with more wealth may be asked by other, less well-off family members for loans, assistance, or other forms of financial support. This can at times feel uncomfortable. In facing such a situation, communication and understanding are essential, so that a balance can be found that respects everyone involved.

The first step in addressing the question of providing financial support to less well-off family members is to discuss it together as a couple, ensuring that whatever decision you reach, you reach it united. Next, if you decide to act, be clear about your motive: is it born of your own need — a wish to be liked and to keep the peace, and so to avoid conflict — or has the other person’s genuine, deserving need moved you to act? Finally, be clear about how you will act and to what end. Are you offering a gift or a loan, for example? If it truly is a loan, be sure the terms are perfectly clear — the repayment period, the interest to be charged (if any) — and make certain both parties hold a copy.

In many cases, however, other family members will dress a gift up as a loan to save face, when everyone knows perfectly well that the so-called loan will never be repaid. So long as you do not later decide to reopen these vague terms and demand repayment, you may treat the loan as though it does not exist. Again, clarifying these matters before making any commitment will spare you a great deal of trouble and pain down the road.

A Three-Step Process

On a foundation of empathy, a couple can begin to plan together for the family’s wealth and the choices it brings. The choices facing a couple often extend as well to estate planning and gifting. Here we offer a three-step process:

1. Clarify your own views.

2. Share your clear views with each other.

3. As a couple, decide the remaining matters together.

The first step is to be clear about your own values, dreams, and the choices before you. Do this alone. Take some time, with a laptop or with pen and paper, to write down what you consider important. Do not be constrained by what you think your partner might consider right. Very often, communication breaks down or fails to get going because we try to respond to another’s views (or what we take to be another’s views) instead of being clear about our own convictions. Managing wealth together as a couple requires that both partners have a clear understanding of their own.

Once you have completed this personal reflection, move to the second step. The goal here is candor with each other. You may find you cannot agree on certain points; the key is to identify the differences between you, discuss them, and respect them. You may discover disagreement where you thought there was none, and agreement where you least expected it.

The key to this step, of course, is listening. This is a skill that takes practice. We suggest that partners take turns speaking, while the other listens with full attention, without interrupting. The listener may then ask clarifying questions, but should not rebut or advance their own view. Only after one partner has finished speaking may the other share their own thoughts.

Very often, couples move through the second step and then return to the first. When discussing whether to set up a trust for the children, to reinvest funds in the business, or to buy a new house, for instance, it becomes an iterative process of thinking, sharing, and thinking again.

The third step is to look to the future. Once you have each clarified your convictions, a way forward will present itself. That path may not be the one either of you expected. It may mean deferring a decision, or acting sooner than anticipated; it may mean sharing information with your children or other family members, or choosing to keep silent and revisit the subject someday later. Whatever the choice of action or communication, you will meet it in a way that is truly shared.

The three-step method above is an effective tool, but it is not easy to carry out; it takes time and patience. If you persevere with it, it can greatly strengthen the relationship between the two of you, and between you and the other members of the family.

Spouses and the Family Meeting

If one branch of a family runs a particularly successful family business, and the family’s members are many, the in-marrying spouse is plainly at a disadvantage in both financial and career terms. In such cases, the family meeting often takes on the family business’s biggest decisions and commercial secrets, and so, by custom, spouses who take no part in managing the family business (or the spouses of the children) may not be invited to attend.

Yet inviting a spouse to the family meeting benefits both partners’ understanding of the family business. This matters all the more if you have children, since the choices made by their grandparents or by the wider family may affect them. Moreover, if a spouse knows nothing at all about the family business, it is hard for that spouse to be an effective partner in raising children against a backdrop of wealth. After all, you cannot teach what you yourself do not understand.

For these reasons, when families ask us, “Should we invite spouses to the family meeting?” our usual answer is, “Of course.” That answer comes with a few caveats, however. First, if you are the mother or father organizing the family meeting, it is best to ask your adult children whether they would like their spouses to attend. Asking in this way shows respect for their marriage, and gives them and their spouses time to weigh the pros and cons of attending.

If the answer is yes, you need not have the spouse attend the entire meeting from the outset. Some portions may be more general or educational in nature, quite distinct from the board or executive sessions where sensitive matters are discussed. Like any family member, a spouse should show that they take the meeting seriously — by doing the necessary preparation, arriving on time, and taking an active part in the discussion.

If a family takes these steps, the spouse’s participation will become a powerful force, and will better enable them to develop and possess the capacity to handle the family’s financial capital, its human capital (the education of the children), its relationship capital, and more.

Blended Families

After a divorce or the death of a parent, holding conversations about family wealth within a blended family is a real challenge. To conduct such conversations effectively in this situation, we suggest adapting the three-step process to the particular character of the blended family. This process can help a couple resolve the core questions while managing their own emotions well.

First, begin from your roles and principles as a couple and as parents. In this situation, your conversation might center on questions such as how you regard sharing wealth with a second spouse and their children, what an inheritance means, and how to address worries the children may have about changes to their inheritance rights brought about by the second marriage. These questions are hard to answer, so in these conversations, try to be patient with each other.

Next, in the second step, seek the views of your children and stepchildren. How you go about this will depend on your family’s circumstances. Some parents invite all the children to the same meeting to talk together; some speak with each child one by one; still others invite each child to talk first with their own biological parent, and then with the stepparent. Whichever approach you take, the goal remains to listen to the children’s thoughts. You might use some thought-provoking questions to draw them out: “What are your expectations regarding the inheritance? How do you view the meaning of an inheritance coming from a stepmother or stepfather?”

Having clarified your roles and principles as a couple and as parents, and having heard the children’s views, the goal of the third step is to communicate your plan. How you do this — whether speaking with the children one by one or as a group — will depend on your family. The key is that, throughout the process, you affirm that they are respected members of the family, and that you are a loving couple.

We would stress that in handling the relationships of a blended family, empathy matters most of all: face each other with empathy, and face the children from a former marriage with empathy.

We also recommend that, where possible, wills and plans be settled while all the parties concerned are still living. Make use of the time you have together, and use documents and family gatherings to make your wishes clear. This will help ensure that the parties understand and respect one another’s intentions, and, in the end, will help preserve harmony among the members of the family.

In Closing

In harmony, through quiet years. In this stretch of life’s long river, picturesque as a poem, husband and wife are like notes of the qin and the se sounding in accord, playing together the harmonious, beautiful music of a life. In knowing and holding to each other, they keep each other company, lean on each other, weather the storms together, and walk on hand in hand.

Through the quiet years, they listen to each other, feel for each other, make room for each other, and together bring out the best in one another. What they possess is not only the sweetness of love, but a deep trust and understanding. Let the wheel of time roll gently across the family’s history, and what it leaves behind are the footprints of happiness.

This article draws on the book Complete Family Wealth, which Flourishing Tree Family Office has acquired and translated; the Chinese edition is forthcoming — please stay tuned.