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Are you doing everything you can to sustain your family relationships and your wealth? This study provides a look at the 15 best practices that 192 members of the world's most successful multi-generational families - members of Family Office Exchange and the Family Business Network - rely on and view as important for the future. A copy of the survey is included so that you can benchmark your family's use of these practices relative to your peers.

When it comes to reaching your family’s financial objectives and perpetuating its wealth, integrated family wealth planning is critical. A family governance system can significantly facilitate that process. This evergreen guide offers best practices and key elements of an effective family governance system, one that can be instrumental and flexible enough in equipping your family to navigate the challenges associated with family, business, financial, and legacy continuity.

One of the most important aspects of a family’s legacy planning can be philanthropy. Family philanthropy can be thought of as the organized charitable giving by several members of a family to achieve a unified goal. It is more than the annual giving of one individual or married couple, though such giving is critically important in its own right. Perhaps the key distinguishing feature of family philanthropy is the presence of a larger collective vision.

Continuity planning requires a comprehensive and thoughtful process that should be utilized and extended beyond the family to a broader group of enterprises that will potentially impact the family for generations to come, including the family office, family business, and family foundation.

Every family has stories of success and failure, hardships and recovery, lessons learned and long forgotten, and it is these stories that enable members of the family to gain a sense of the family's uniqueness, connect with the source of the family's financial wealth, and deal with losses and transitions. The author suggests three ways to begin preserving these valuable stories.

Learning early on how to assist family members to understand the conceptual and practical aspects of their social connections is a central concern of the family. Using a confidentiality/non-disclosure agreement provides a structure and begins a process that sets the framework for this work.

A search for identity and independence in a personal journey separate from the family, a challenging of assumptions, a wrestling with questions. These are the 20-something years – critical, testing and thrilling, for both young adults and their parents.

Just as every business needs a succession plan if it is to survive the death or incapacity of its founder, every family should plan for the successor management of the family's finances. Failure to attend to this issue can lead to serious consequences for the surviving spouse and other family members.

Families that successfully manage generational planning actively foster communication and trust within the family, identify shared values that define the family, take time to establish a thoughtful family governance system and give younger members the opportunity to have an impact through active participation in family affairs.

A business transition plan should provide a good fit: for the business, for family members and for the owner. A transition road map also should provide clear instructions in the event of the owner's incapacitation or death – a sound reason to establish a plan sooner rather than later.