Most families spend months on the legal and financial structure of succession. Almost none ask the one question that determines whether the plan will hold.
Are the relationships in this family strong enough to carry it?
Not whether the documents are correct. Not whether the tax structure is optimal. Whether the trust between siblings, between generations, between the founder couple themselves is solid enough to survive the pressure that succession puts on everything.
The research is consistent. Seventy percent of family wealth transitions fail. Almost never for financial or legal reasons. The failure is almost always human. Breakdown in trust. Unspoken expectations hardening into resentment. A plan built on assumptions nobody ever tested in honest conversation.
The advisory industry knows this. The research has been available for decades. And yet the process almost never changes. Legal first. Financial second. Relational last, or not at all.
We call this Relational Due Diligence. The same rigour you apply to the financial structure, applied to the relationships the plan depends on. Not therapy. Not family counselling in the traditional sense. An honest assessment of where the trust actually is, what expectations have never been spoken out loud, and what conversations need to happen before the wealth moves.
The succession plan is not the legacy. The relationships are the legacy.
The plan is only as strong as the family trying to hold it.
Grant and Christine Wattie work with $1M+ founder families navigating succession, sale, and transition. They are based in Havelock North, New Zealand, and work with families globally.