Many wealth structures are created during periods of major change.
A business may have been sold, a family may be relocating internationally, or liquidity may have increased quickly following an exit or transaction. At that stage, the focus is usually on putting in place a sensible framework that can support the family long-term.
Initially, the structure may fit the family very well.
The difficulty is that families continue changing long after the documents are signed.
Children grow up in different jurisdictions from their parents, businesses evolve, family members develop different attitudes toward wealth and involvement, and years later, the structure itself may look broadly the same while the family around it operates very differently.
But that does not mean the original planning was wrong.
Often, the structure worked exactly as intended for years. The pressure tends to come from circumstances nobody could fully anticipate at the outset.
International mobility is a good example. A structure originally connected to one or two jurisdictions can gradually become connected to several more, thereby changing reporting obligations or succession laws. Family members may now live in countries with very different expectations around inheritance or family involvement.
In practice, these issues rarely appear all at once.
More often, the shift happens gradually. Younger generations may want greater visibility around structures. Family members may expect more involvement in discussions that previous generations would have left entirely to advisers or trustees. Questions also begin to emerge about how future generations will engage with wealth they did not create themselves.
We see this particularly where structures were originally designed around the preferences of a wealth creator rather than the realities of future generations. A common example is a private trust company acting as trustee for several branches of the same family. While that arrangement may have worked well during the settlor’s lifetime, circumstances often change after their death. Children marry, relocate and become subject to different influences and priorities. In some cases, family members who were once comfortable operating under a single trustee arrangement begin seeking separate trustee representation for their own branch of the family.
At IMG, we see these conversations more frequently.
Long-term structures now often involve wider discussions beyond legal and tax planning alone. Families are spending more time thinking about governance, communication and how wealth will function across future generations.
From a ‘trustee’s perspective, this is usually a matter of judgment. Some structures require very little adjustment over time. Others need adapting as family circumstances change across jurisdictions and generations.
Often, the challenge is not that the structure stops working completely. It is that the family around it no longer operates in the same way it did when the planning was first established.
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