Everyone, including the children. The working rule is that every branch of the family is summoned, every generation has a seat, and every voice speaks at least once, even if the six-year-old only answers the ice...
Everyone, including the children. The working rule is that every branch of the family is summoned, every generation has a seat, and every voice speaks at least once, even if the six-year-old only answers the ice breaker. Who attends is decided by membership in the family, not by income, age, or who currently holds the assets.
The reasoning is practical, not sentimental. David Bentall's finding, laid out in How to Run Your First Family Meeting, is that most family fights are fact shortages: two siblings arguing about fairness are usually working from different assumptions about what exists and what was promised. The cure is everyone hearing the same words at the same time, which only works if everyone is in the room. Children attend because a child who grows up speaking at family meetings becomes an adult who shows up to them; the first-meeting agenda gives even the youngest a role in the ice breaker and the closing appreciations round. Teenagers graduate to observer seats with one agenda item where their view is asked for and written down, the same on-ramp The Successor Development Track uses to turn heirs into competent future owners. And the struggling branch, and the one that quarrelled with everyone, get summoned too. Craig Aronoff and John Ward identify the moment family branches stop knowing each other as the moment conflict becomes inevitable, a danger the traditional clan summons has been preventing for centuries by simple insistence: everyone comes, as The Clan Meeting Is Already Your Family Council shows.
The common misunderstanding is that money talk is for the adults who hold the money, and that children, low earners, or distant relatives should be protected from it or filtered out of it. Exclusion does not protect anyone. The excluded still learn the family's money story, only they learn it from fragments, rumors, and funeral arguments, and silence is where resentment compounds. Every future heir will one day vote on the land, the business, or the estate, and the meeting is where they learn how before their vote is dangerous. Two boundaries keep the wide invitation workable. First, in-laws: decide their status explicitly and in advance, in peacetime, rather than discovering the disagreement when a specific in-law is at the door. Second, not every topic needs every ear; a parents-only session can handle a sensitive matter, but the default is open, because a family that defaults to secrecy is training its members to do the same to each other.
One action: when you send your next meeting invitation, write the full list first, every branch, every generation, then justify every name you feel tempted to remove. If the only reason is habit or awkwardness, the name stays.