A family wealth expert on how the 1% deal with gift giving, introducing new partners, and negotiating pre-nups during the holiday season
If the old saying is to be believed, there are three things that you never discuss at a polite dinner table: religion, money, and politics. In recent years, however, this particular edict seems less and less relevant. Social media, polarization, and a general shift towards disclosure means that we all likely know quite a bit more about these taboo topics than previous generations.
Even as society has moved in the direction of sharing, discussing money remains ultra-complicated for one group: the ultra-wealthy. The topic is so fraught with complexities that Valerie Galinskaya, an expert in family wealth management, has devoted her career to demystifying the ways in which the one percent should discuss their money.
Galinskaya is the head and co-founder of the Merrill Center for Family Wealth, which assists approximately 350 families with high net worths navigate the issues specific to those with extreme amounts of wealth. She conceived of the center 10 years ago, after attending a meeting with high-level clients, who expressed concerns about how their extreme wealth impacted not only themselves but also their children and extended families.
For Galinskaya’s clients, the holidays can be one of the most challenging times of the year. Issues that could cause drama in any family – like gift-giving or introducing a new significant other – come with added difficulties when there are millions of dollars on the line.
Galinskaya sat down with Quartz to discuss some of the challenges her clients face and the advice that she gives them at this time of year. Her answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: People often introduce new significant others to their families during the holiday season. How do your clients address their family’s wealth when bringing a new partner to family gatherings?
For younger generations, it’s not that they don’t want to share information about their families with their partners. It’s extra-awkward, for them, because they often don’t have all the information about their parents’ wealth. If there hasn’t been a discussion within their family, that makes conversations with other people that much more difficult.
We encourage parents to talk to their children and say, “Look, your boyfriend or girlfriend is more than welcome to come for the holidays. And we really want to start a conversation with you about money.”
We then work with our client’s children to develop an elevator speech that feels comfortable to share with their significant other.
With one client it was, “We’d love for you to join us. My family has done really well. Real estate and having the space to entertain family and friends is very important to them. This is my family’s success and while I’m very proud, these are not my assets. Candidly, I have very little information about what exists. I don’t want you to be surprised and also I want you to feel welcome here.”
Q: How does extreme wealth effect the way families discuss gift-giving?
I think many families view gifts as a way to transfer wealth, rather than something to give with intention. A lot of the families that we work with give annual exclusion gifts – which is the amount any one of us can give tax free to another person. We had one family that was giving fairly generous annual gifts to their children and in-laws. The children said, ‘thank you,’ pretty briefly but otherwise didn’t really engage with the gifts.
Later when we were speaking with the children, they said, “look we’re incredibly grateful – but our parents just write a check.”
I asked one of the daughters in the family, “this is a relatively large amount of money – what do you do with it?” She told me, “well I just put it in my investment account. I love my parents, but they’re not the no-strings-attached kind of people.”
The parents were surprised – they said, “when it comes to our trust fund, we have very stringent guidelines. But this is really meant to be a gift.”
The gift givers and the recipients had two different preconceived notions in their heads and neither was really accurate. And then the family wasn’t able to enjoy giving or receiving gifts because they never had a conversation. When I asked, “why don’t you speak about it” they said “in our family, it’s considered really impolite to talk about money.”
Q: This is also a time of year when people are getting engaged. What advice do you give clients about discussing prenuptial agreements with their soon-to-be spouses?
The first step is almost a series of conversations – first the parents speak with their young adult child. Then it’s important that the child delivers that message to his or her partner. Someone who married into a family shared with me that when a pre-nup was first brought up, it felt like it was him versus his girlfriend’s army of advisors and we want to avoid that.
We really highlight that when having this conversation with a partner, you need to set the context and the purpose. We had one young man whose parents had been working with us since he was a toddler. He had spoken to his parents about wealth and knew that a prenuptial agreement was a guideline in his family. More importantly, he knew why that was a guideline: because sustaining wealth for healthcare and education was important. While he didn’t immediately bring up the prenuptial agreement with his girlfriend, he felt comfortable talking about it.
With another client, we reframed the conversation so they viewed a pre-nuptial agreement not just as a mechanism to protect assets, but also as a mechanism for two young people to sit down and really have an honest conversation to ensure they’re both protected and understand how they’re going to approach money in their family.
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