Will’s World: Emotion clouds subject of succession
© Richard Stanton I’ve recently set up power of attorney for my parents. I should have done it years ago, of course, but as always with this kind of thing just hadn’t got round to it. Better late than never, I guess.
Before I go any further, I should perhaps state for anyone who happens to know us as a family that my parents are both in excellent health, and I have no doubt that they’ll be here driving me up the wall for many years to come.
See also: Business Clinic: How do we structure our business/succession?
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Besides, they categorically don’t have my permission to get old and decrepit.
There’s far too much work to do on the farm and I need the cheap labour more than ever.
Nevertheless, it’s good to have the legalities sorted for the peace of mind of everyone concerned.
No time like the present
In practice, it was straightforward enough, and we got it all done online in a morning.
Emotionally, though, I found it more challenging than I imagined, as it brought into play many potential future scenarios that I’d rather not think about.
I suppose it’s just part of the process that we all must go through at some point in our lives.
Time has a nasty habit of marching relentlessly on, after all.
Why do we find these kinds of succession conversations so difficult in farming families, though, and why do we put them off?
I’m at the point in life where many of my friends are going through similar motions, and far more of them are struggling with it than not.
Whether it’s individuals unwilling to discuss the long-term future and its implications at all, leading to uncertainty and confusion for everyone else involved, or differences of opinion over levels of inheritance threatening to tear families and businesses apart completely, these predicaments are extremely sad.
Maybe we need some sort of industry roadmap for these things, where potential outcomes can be discussed calmly and rationally, with an external professional involved to moderate, explain, and ultimately put decisions into action.
I can think of many places where that would help considerably.
Then again, when were farming families ever calm and rational? If we were, we probably wouldn’t be farming in the first place, would we?
Asset management
Ironically, given how many of us have chosen to work so closely together, I believe it’s not each other, but rather the deeply complex and emotional relationship we have with the piece of land and collection of buildings that we call our farms that causes most of the problems.
In a fast-changing and increasingly uncertain world, it’s a seemingly constant and reassuring presence in our lives, and that’s especially the case if it’s been fertilised with the blood, sweat and tears of several generations of a family.
Perhaps because of that, we just care far too much to even contemplate a time when we’re no longer around to shape the future of our farms.
The level of emotion involved clouds our judgement and makes it too painful to talk about, no matter how much we know deep down that we should, even with the family members most affected by stubborn silence.
We’re far too beholden to our dead ancestors in this industry, worrying far too much about what those who’ve gone before us on our farms might think of us or say.
I suspect, however, that if they could somehow talk to us, the first piece of advice they’d give would be not to listen to them, but to each other.