How to Treat Family Members Fairly by Rich Merk

Maine Woodland Owners is committed to helping small woodland owners develop succession plans so they can know their life’s work will be passed on to someone who will continue their stewardship efforts. Here’s another topic to stimulate landowner efforts to develop and improve their plans.

This area of succession planning creates a lot of questions. For parents it may be one of the most gut-wrenching topics they have to deal with. While doing succession planning presentations, I’ve come to realize there’s no right or wrong answer and each woodland owner has different needs, goals, hopes and challenges.

I’ve seen some multigenerational family woodland owners deal with this in a standard way that’s an accepted norm for that family. In other families there is no standard way. Each generation does what it thinks is right. But what’s inherent in all the plans I’ve seen has been a real attempt to give or sell the land to the next generational member who will be the best or most interested steward. There hasn’t always been equal treatment of each offspring, but there has been an attempt at equitable treatment.

I’d suggest that equitable treatment is in some ways equal treatment. To my way of thinking, current owners should get satisfaction from what they’re doing as well as trying to treat family members equally. As an example, one landowner had only the woodlot to give – no other assets of value. One child lived out of state, but the other lived near the land and managed it on weekends. The parent told the first child he could have the land if he paid a set amount of money to the second sibling who lived away. One son got the desired land at a much reduced rate. The other sibling got cash, although less than what an outright sale might have generated, and the parent got the satisfaction of knowing the land would still be in the family, in capable hands. This example may or may not have treated both siblings equally, but it tried to be equitable to both children while providing the current owner with satisfaction.