How to navigate intergenerational land and wealth transfers without your family being torn apart.

By Ike Lasater

When my grandfather, Edward Cunningham Lasater, died in 1930, his South Texas ranch was in financial trouble. For years, he had struggled against a mountain of debt incurred to purchase land that stretched from southeast of Falfurrias, northwest towards Realitos. And yet despite his efforts, at the time of his death, the estate was still burdened, as the country segued from an agricultural depression during the 1920s into the financial depression of the 1930s.

Although my father was just 23 at the time, my grandmother relied heavily on him to help her sort through the finances of my grandfather’s legacy.

Just days before his father’s death, my father won his dream job as a Braniff pilot but sacrificed it to stay on in Falfurrias to help his mother salvage what they could.

When my grandmother died in 1946, she designated my father and his younger brother, Tom, as trustees for their younger sister’s inheritance. This trusteeship arrangement fueled the increasing resentment of my aunt and her husband against my father and uncle, mostly my father. It spawned at least one lawsuit between my aunt and her husband, on the one hand, and my father on the other, over access to property. This lawsuit lasted many years and was ultimately concluded in the equivalent of the Texas Supreme Court.

This rift was so thorough and deep that I only met my father’s sister and her husband for the first time when I was 19. On my own initiative, I took a bus across New England to meet them at their home in Vermont. About this same time, I visited my father’s brother and his wife and children in Colorado. I had not seen them since I was six years old. My experience was emblematic of the estrangement that others in the family experienced.

This story undoubtedly sounds familiar to you. You have heard of other families who have been fractured over land and estate issues. Maybe even your own. Whether we realize it or not, such conflicts are often driven by hurt. The hurt can be decades old and continued over generations. If there is hurt, people will fight over whatever there is to fight over, and if there is something of value, they will fight over that.

So then, how do we deal with situations such as these? My own approach has evolved over my 69 years. Growing up in South Texas, like most of the boys in that culture, I learned to face conflict head-on, often with anger, aggression, and the willingness to throw a punch.

Later, I became a civil trial attorney in the state and federal courts of California. I was counsel in cases that resulted in millions of dollars in attorneys’ fees. And over time, it increasingly seemed to me that most of these fees could have been avoided by more skilled communication by one or more of the parties, or their counsel.

However, in the legal context, these communication skills were specialized into a role typically called a “mediator,” and mediators were typically not called in to assist until the brink of trial.

Since withdrawing from the practice of law in 1999, my work has focused on other methods of conflict resolution, including acting as a mediator for multi-party partnership dissolutions and disputes among multi-generation family-owned businesses.

On the other hand, with trust, we can collaborate together to produce the kind of resolutions that satisfy all the stakeholders. Therefore, to have fruitful collaboration, connection is the first task I work on, and it is the foundation that is essential to satisfying outcomes.

Creating clarity while family members are still alive
The first step in avoiding legacy-draining legal conflict is to create clarity regarding estate decisions while family members are still alive and mentally competent. Successful conversations with the people who have emotional and financial stakes in the inheritance can help you avoid the litigation that can eat up wealth.

These conversations can create opportunities to heal old emotional drivers that perpetuate conflict and disconnection, while at the same time making it more likely that your family will be able to work together and thrive.

Conversations regarding who inherits land are often challenging and fraught with emotion. You have to be clear about what your estate planning wishes are and be willing to have conversations with people who are included, and those who are not included but believe they should be included.

If you are a parent initiating these conversations, remember that you are modeling for your kids a kind of openness. You are giving your children a gift by demonstrating how you go about asking them to participate. If you do not maintain this openness, you can leave hurt to fester for generations that will create estrangement between cousins to the third and fourth level, like it did in my family.

Talk about what there is to leave and how you would like to see it dispersed. If inheritors disagree with your decisions, talk about it with them. Explain why. Hear their objections. And, if necessary, bring in a trusted advisor to facilitate a conflict discussion.

These conversations regarding inheritance can help you improve your communication skills. Development of your skills will also serve you well in your work as you deal with employees, lenders, community members and so on.

Creating clarity around estate planning decisions can be seen as part of a larger picture of family members collaborating effectively. To this end, I recommend holding regular family meetings to develop shared goals, values, and to make family business decisions.

Inheritors: When you are left with a mess
It may be that these conversations to create clarity regarding inheritance have not taken place. Instead, with the death of an estate holder, you may find yourself in one of those situations where there is hurt and anger among those who have inherited or hoped to inherit. Or, you may find yourself faced with confusion about how to divide assets among inheritors. You are dealing with a mess. What to do?

In such situations, the first impulse is to have the lawyers take over by initiating legal actions. And, of course, this may be what is called for under your circumstances. However, in light of the fact that the vast majority of lawsuits filed are settled by the parties before trial, remember that the lawsuit itself can give further reasons for the parties involved to be hurt and angry. And, of course, litigation tends to eat up family wealth. So, remember that connection is a route to resolution that you are likely to find the most satisfying of all your alternatives. Bearing this in mind, even once the lawyers become involved, look for opportunities to reach out, to reconnect and, when relevant, attempt to heal old hurts.

Route to resolution: A non-legal alternative
There is hope of a positive resolution, no matter how long the history of the dispute, and there is a non-legal process that you can turn to for resolving the intra-family disputes that often come about as a result of inheritance.

From my own family experience, after our parents’ deaths, my siblings and I discussed for more than three years what to do with the home and related buildings that we had inherited as undivided co-owners.

In the final stages of deciding what was going to happen to this property, we were negotiating the terms of a lease between two of my siblings. These discussions took place intermittently over the course of a year or so.

In the early stages, each of the two siblings was seeking to have the terms in the lease that applied to them be the most favorable. And this most often resulted in a perceived detriment to the second sibling.

Towards the end of this process, there was a point at which, in my terminology, a “shift” occurred, and these two siblings began to negotiate out of a deeper sense of connection. Much to my surprise, both completely flipped their negotiating positions and began, it seemed to me, to negotiate for more favorable terms for the other, rather than for themselves. It was clear to me that they sought to give a gift to the other, rather than hold tightly to just their own interests. Shortly thereafter, the lease terms were finalized.

This “shift,” as I call it, was new to me at that time. Since then, I have seen this shift occur in all kinds of situations, even in situations where the participants had little hope that a facilitated conversation would produce positive results.

One of the ways that I lay the foundation for these kinds of shifts is to work with people in one-on-one sessions before a facilitated group session. In these sessions, I support the person I am with to do what I call “their own work”.

This “work” often involves talking through whatever memories they have that, when they recall them, feel hurtful. Because if you do not work through your own hurt, you are not going to be able to listen to the hurt of the others involved. And if you cannot listen to and care about their hurt, it is very unlikely that you will find a satisfactory resolution.

How do you go about doing “your own work”? You can talk through your hurt with a psychological professional, or you can do it with others who, either by training or experience, know how to listen — like a trusted confidant.

And when it comes to estate conflicts, be willing to ask for help when you sit down with the other people with whom you are in conflict. Help might mean a professional, like a mediator or psychologist. Or, it may mean a trusted advisor, like an accountant or clergy member.

You may find it difficult to ask for help because it seems that you have tried everything; you may be thinking that you have failed. Asking for help may feel like you are admitting your failure and may feed into other ideas of not being good enough, of being weak and ineffective. If this is the case, take small steps. Be willing to talk about asking for help with people who are close to you and whom you trust. Then begin to expand the circle of those you speak with until you find someone with whom you feel comfortable.

The help that I suggest you ask for is the kind of help that supports you in your efforts to be heard the way you want to be heard, and for the others in the dispute to be heard the way they would like to be heard.

You want to have everyone who is needed to resolve the dispute and restore the community involved in these conversations, however you define community.

This does not mean everybody has to be in the room all at the same time.

For instance, I typically begin by speaking individually to each person involved in the dispute and then go on to have sessions with two or more people as needed to move toward resolution and healing.

Assuming you are dealing with a conflict that requires multiple sessions, what you do after each session can be as important as what you did during the session.

If you find yourself thinking over and over again about something that happened during a session and are feeling agitated about it, this will only lead to further disconnection. The first step in changing this dynamic is to realize that this is what is happening.

From there, you have options available to shift this thinking into something that will lead back to connection. This can include very simple things like a walk or more vigorous exercise by yourself or with someone you feel comfortable talking with. Or prayer, conversations with a spiritual advisor, meditation, or psychotherapy.

For more extensive exercises and guidance, see From Conflict to Connection: Transforming Difficult Conversations into Peaceful Resolutions by John Kinyon and Ike Lasater.

As for the conflict within my family after the trusteeship arrangement set up by my grandmother, the resolution was neither quick nor neat.

Bringing together disparate parts of the family has been, and continues to be, a multi-decade process.

It began in an unexpected way. Working out terms of the lease between my sister and brother was a key step in this reconnection. This is because the lease agreement was an indispensable step in the development of a family association, which is focused around a yearly gathering at Thanksgiving. These gatherings are held at the former headquarters of my grandfather’s ranch, on the land where my father, his brother, and sister were raised. Up to 60 family members gather at long tables each November under 150-year-old oak trees to socialize, eat, drink, and have a family meeting. In this meeting, we share a report on family capital and announce births, deaths, education milestones and professional achievements. We also address the business of maintaining these majestic oaks and the surrounding land.

There have been many attempts and much effort by my cousins and their children, as well as my children, to invite the estranged members of our family to join us at these annual gatherings. Even if they decline, these invitation conversations have proved to be connecting. We now have a reason to engage and reach out with the Thanksgiving event in mind. And so, there has been some movement towards the healing of this rift, which now dates back some 80 years.

Healing family hurt and avoiding future disconnecting hurt is as much about dealing with the big estate planning issues as it is about the day-to-day conversations upon which connection can be created so that there will be a foundation of trust from which to deal with conflicts as they arise.

Each interaction is a step towards connection and healing or a step away. The choice is ours.

Peaceful Relations is excerpted from the March 2019 issue of The Cattleman magazine. Join today to start your subscription.

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