Ed came out to greet me and introduce me to his two sons, and we spent a fair amount of time talking about the business.

One son had been there for fifteen years, the other for ten. He also had a daughter, Connie, who was not on hand.

When we went into his office, he pointed to a picture of Connie atop a dusty file cabinet. She looked like an attractive, intelligent young woman, and to get a better sense of the family, I asked if she was married.

“No,” he said, “And she probably never will be. She’s got it too good as it is.”

Connie was away at graduate school, working on her second Master’s degree.

Though she had worked in the business during summers in high school and college, she now spent the break between semesters traveling Europe with her mother or spending time in the city where she attended school, enjoying the perks of being a young woman with disposable income.

We talked a bit more, but I still wasn’t sure why he wanted me to meet with him. I asked him point-blank, and he pulled open the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet.

The drawer was packed to overflowing with all sorts of legal documents: wills, trusts, buy-sell agreements, and insurance policies.

He told me that over the previous several years he had gone to seminars, he had attended trade association events, he had taken his wife to this lawyer and that lawyer in an attempt to set up an estate plan… all to no avail.

“When I go, I want the business to be divided between my sons - after all they are the ones most responsible for its growth. But my wife refuses.

She says ‘When my parents died, I didn’t get anything. My brothers got it all. That is NOT going to happen to my daughter! My daughter is not going to suffer just because she’s a girl.

It’s a third, a third, and a third, or I’m not signing anything.’”

Needless to say, this was a problem.

Both of the boys, during the ten and fifteen years they had been with the company, had grown the business dramatically. They were, in fact, the reason their father was still fired up and pushing the company forward.

To expect them to buy back from their sister that which they had helped create was not only unfair to them, it could potentially ruin the business.

In addition, the boys had young sons and daughters, some approaching college age. To put this kind of financial burden on the sons just didn’t make sense, particularly when the daughter was living the high life far away from the daily operation of the company. They had reached an impasse.

Ed invited me up to the house for some pie. This was the very same house I had been forbidden to look at on my way in, but now Ed was ushering me in the front door, where his wife Betty was waiting for us with dessert.

Betty showed me with great pride the pictures of all of her grandchildren, of her house, of her trips with Connie—all of those things we would all be proud to display.

She was such a warm, friendly person that it seemed impossible that she could be so insistent on something that was clearly neither fair nor in the best interests of anyone.

After we ate, everyone else left, and Betty and I sat down and talked. And we talked, and we talked, and we talked. And it was true that when her parents died, her brothers ended up with the business.

Remember, this is a small town, and her family’s business was a big one carrying even more name recognition than her husband’s.

What she was giving up when she lost out on the inheritance was not only a share of the business, but the family name as well.

I left feeling a bit disappointed. In spite of the great conversation and the delicious pie, I had not been able to change her mind to see anything other than a third, a third, and a third.

Since Betty and Ed were relatively young, those shares were only going to get bigger and bigger with every passing year, and the potential for financial disaster should the boys need to buy out their sister seemed unavoidable.

Before I left, I stopped by Ed’s office one more time to say goodbye. I told him how frustrated I felt since I hadn’t been able to change Betty’s mind.

“That’s why I didn’t want you to look at the house when you came in. I didn’t want Betty to talk to you before I had gotten a chance to explain things from my side!”