Family business advisor Patti Durand and her non-farming-sibling partner Chris Corbett walk through three questions most farm families never finish. Estate litigation is the fastest-growing area of law. This is why.
Every farm family eventually needs a conversation about who inherits what, who doesn't, and why. Almost none of them finish it.
Patti Durand — family business advisor and author of The Future Leader — has built her career on being in the room when those conversations happen. Her business partner Chris Corbett grew up as one of five kids on a Manitoba farm and left at sixteen. Between the three of us, every side of the non-farming sibling story shows up at this table.
Patti's working claim is a plain one. Unspoken expectations become resentments. What gets left unsaid at a twenty-million-dollar kitchen table gets paid for later — in estate litigation, in family silence, in the farm that stops functioning.
Across an hour, Patti walks through three questions she has carried into hundreds of family meetings. Each one is designed to bring heirs to the table without handing them the keys. What surfaces is harder than a will and more uncomfortable than most farming parents expect.
Guests: Patti Durand and Chris Corbett of Bright Track Consulting — brighttrack.ca
Subscribe to Growing the Future for new episodes.