44: Prenuptials: Engaged Healthy, Wealthy & Wise

Introduction

Welcome to Let’s Talk Family Enterprise, a podcast that explores the ideas, concepts and models that best serve Family Enterprise Advisors in supporting their family clients.

 

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Description

Host Steve Legler speaks with Coventry Edwards-Pitt about her third book, Engaged Healthy, Wealthy & Wise, which tells the true stories of wealth inheritors and their significant others, and how they navigated the situations surrounding the prenuptial agreements they were asked to sign by the family’s well-meaning advisors.

 

Guest bio

Coventry Edwards-Pitt

 

As a Partner and the Chief Creative Officer at Ballentine Partners, Covie is responsible for thought leadership for the firm and ensuring that the firm brings novel thinking to our clients. She specializes in helping her clients manage their wealth’s impact and ensure that their comprehensive wealth management strategy reflects their families’ values and goals.

 

You can learn more about Coventry Edwards-Pitt on LinkedIn and the Ballantine Partners website.

 

Key Takeaways

[0:26] Steve Legler introduces today’s guest, Coventry Edwards-Pitt, and invites her to share a little bit about her third book, Engaged Healthy, Wealthy & Wise.

 

[1:46] Covie frames her latest book in the broader context of the first two: Healthy, Wealthy & Wise and Raised Healthy, Wealthy & Wise.

 

[3:48] Flipping the usual engagement-related questions on their heads!

 

[6:04] Covie talks about the pain she heard in the book interviews that led her to see what is broken in the way families of wealth and their advisors tackle the question of engagement and marriage.

 

[8:25] No one ever really broaches the subject of that process, sharing these stories is a way of alleviating the emotional burden while trying to find a better way.

 

[10:50] The David and Goliath issue facing young couples beyond losing their sense of agency, loyalty, equality, and unity with each other.

 

[12:36] Covie shares a story that she calls the gold standard.

 

[14:10] Covie explains the history of the prenup and how it’s evolved over time.

 

[16:22] If the strong majority of couples are made up of one inheritor and one not, how can we build a better prenup process so as not to generate discord in young couples?

 

[17:23] It isn’t about if to prenup, it’s about how. Coie speaks to how an advisor’s role could be modified to better tackle the “how” of prenups.

 

[19:45] Covie shares best practices and talks about sibling relationships and how they might present particular challenges when it comes to prenups.

 

[23:12] Agency and autonomy is a new generation goal, Covie shares an example.

 

[25:20] Covie shares her thoughts on how advisors can better support their families.

 

[30:28] Covie shares her reading recommendation as well as her advice for advisors.

 

[35:00] Steve thanks Coventry Edwards-Pitt for sharing so much of what she learned and signs off until next month.

 

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Mentioned in this episode

The Let’s Talk Family Enterprise podcast is brought to you by Family Enterprise Canada.

 

Engaged Healthy, Wealthy & Wise: Lessons from inheritors and their significant others on how they have navigated love and family wealth and forged their own joint path, by Coventry Edwards-Pitt

 

The Generous Prenup: How to Support Your Marriage and Avoid the Pitfalls, by Laurie Israel

 

In Three Generations: A Story About Family, Wealth, and Beating the Odds, by Kristin Heaney

 

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