Wealth in Families

by Charles W. Collier

Collier spent 35 years as Harvard’s senior philanthropic advisor working with families of wealth. He discovered the hardest questions families face aren’t financial, they’re about meaning.

He argues estate planning usually starts with products instead of values, and that’s backwards. The real work is figuring out what a family wants to preserve beyond money.

• Exploring what wealth actually means to a family
• Deciding what amount of inheritance is appropriate
• Building honest intrafamily communication
• Developing a balanced relationship with money
• Using philanthropy to pass down both assets and values

Collier’s central belief is that families thrive not by avoiding money conversations, but by having them early and often. The book leans on a Socratic style, posing questions rather than dictating answers.