The Thoughtful Family Constitution
A family constitution is not a legal document but a quiet accord. We consider the patient work by which a family commits to writing the principles by which it intends to be known.
The family constitution, where one exists in any serious sense, is among the most discreet and consequential documents in the affairs of a distinguished family. It is not a legal instrument in the ordinary sense; it carries no enforcement mechanism and is rarely produced before any tribunal. It is, rather, an accord. It is a written statement of the principles by which the family has decided it intends to be known, and by which its members agree, in good conscience, to be guided in matters the law does not reach.
We are sometimes asked whether a family of thoughtful standing genuinely needs such a document. Our answer is given without hesitation. Families without such a document, in our experience, encounter their important questions for the first time when those questions become urgent. Those who have written one, even in the simplest form, have at least had the conversation in calm circumstances. The constitution is principally valuable for the conversation it requires, and only secondarily for the document that conversation eventually produces.
A family constitution which attempts to address every conceivable matter quickly becomes one which addresses none of them well. We counsel that the document confine itself to the questions which the family has, on reflection, decided are central. These include the principles for deploying the family’s wealth and the standards of conduct for its members in public life. They also cover the philanthropic intentions the family wishes to maintain across generations. Finally, they address the careful approach to the next generation’s education and the moment of their introduction to the family’s affairs. The smaller matters of household administration belong elsewhere.
A family which has written down what it stands for has, in the act of writing, already begun to live by it.
The composition of a family constitution is, in our experience, the work of years rather than months. The first draft is rarely the final one; early conversations expose differences of view which themselves require unhurried resolution. We counsel principals to engage a discreet outside facilitator of sound judgement to chair these conversations. A family member who attempts to chair the discussion is, by the nature of the position, unable to contribute to the conversation as freely as the matter requires. The right facilitator allows every voice to be heard, draws the conversation toward the principles on which the family can genuinely agree, and produces, in time, a document the family is proud to sign.
We close on a final point about review. A constitution which is signed and then placed in a drawer becomes, by the third generation, a curiosity rather than a guide. Prudent families review the document at intervals of perhaps five years, in the same unhurried calm in which it was first composed. They amend it where the family's circumstances have genuinely changed. A constitution refreshed in this way remains, across the decades, the living accord by which the family quietly knows itself.
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