I found it hard to complete this section, to summarize in a few words how I might approach any individual assignment. Financial disputes run the gamut in complexity from say a relatively simple division or allocation of assets (say in a divorce or prenuptial agreement) to a complex estate plan for a family owning many classes of assets and maybe an operating business. Overlaid on the financial considerations is, of course, the human element – the emotional aspects that must be identified and addressed so each person’s relationship can be preserved.
Maybe these issues can be addressed as being in one of these three “buckets”
Basic Requirements
All clients can count on my total integrity and honesty, a fiduciary approach to the assignment that puts the client’s interests ahead of my own, full disclosure of fees in a written engagement letter, a working relationship free of any conflicts of interest and knowledge that the issue we are discussing is within my scope of competency. It is my intent to work with other professionals to deliver solutions to the client, especially working in concert with a client’s existing network of professionals.
Technical Requirements
By the word “technical”, I mean the description presented to me of the factual content of the disagreement. I do not see my role as an auditor or as an investigator of the facts or a final arbiter of the “historical truth” but rather as discovering for myself the factual basis of the dispute. I will come to my conclusions by looking at documents and the written record whenever this is possible. This section also covers my knowledge of the tax law, the possible approaches to estate planning, the operating constraints for a business and other practical considerations which I have found to be useful in achieving creative solutions.
Inter-Personal Requirements
Accepting that the successful resolution of disputes between people requires the addressing of their individual emotional demands is the first step in this process. The first requirement for this process is the feeling of emotional safety, the feeling that their feelings will be heard respectfully and in their entirety without judgment or argument. Making my clients feel safe and able to communicate with me is one critical requirement for successful problem resolution.
Addressing these emotional constraints is probably more difficult than even understanding the tax code – which is itself in a class of its own! I realize that one part of most disputes is the meaning attributed by each party to the “facts as I see them”. Emotionally laden “meaning” is consciously or unconsciously attributed to the “facts”. Thus a sibling who received a smaller inheritance than his brother may conclude that he was “less loved” than his brother. This is an example of an “emotional attribution” to the “fact” that his inheritance was smaller. There may or may not be any justification to this conclusion but the resolution of the dispute with the brother is not going to be achieved by logical argument or a recitation of other “facts”.
