Family Wealth

The landmark book that changed the way exceptional families
think about their heritage, their wealth, and their legacy to
future generations--now revised and expanded.

Every family, looking at the next generation, hopes to confer
advantages that are more than just material and financial--to
inculcate character and leadership, to inspire creativity and
enterprise, to help all family members find and follow their
individual callings, and to avoid the financial dependency and loss
of initiative that can all too often be an unwanted consequence of
financial success. Yet many families never succeed in realizing
that vision, much less sustaining it for three, four, or five
generations and beyond.

James Hughes has thought deeply about these challenges, and his
insights are at once practical and profound. For more than three
decades, he has personally guided multiple generations of families
in creating strategies to preserve their human and intellectual
capital as well as their financial assets. His teachings synthesize
insights from psychology, anthropology, political history,
philosophy, economic theory, and the law, with examples ranging
from Aristotle to cutting-edge social science theory. His ideas
have been taken up by numerous exceptional families, by their
advisers, and by scores of authors, practitioners, and academics
who have found value in the methods he pioneered.

The first edition of this book, privately published, became a
word-of-mouth classic. Now, Hughes has updated and substantially
expanded it with new chapters that challenge conventional notions
of wealth and offer guidelines for conserving family assets in the
broadest senses. Filled with tested principles and practices for
family governance and joint decision making, it is a rich source of
workable wisdom that family members can put into practice today, to
the enduring benefit and gratitude of future generations.