Settling a Farm Estate: Why It's More Than an Economic Problem

Farmers have struggled with the same business and family problem essentially forever: what happens to the farm when parents die. The conflict between fairness and equality has never been truly resolved except for the wealthy, and not all of them either.

For most farms, the hard facts of long division mean too many heirs dealing with too few hard-to-divide assets. When the bulk of those assets are acres, acres operated by one of the heirs, agreeing on what a successful solution to the division of wealth looks like can elude even seemingly happy and loving families.

Legal and financial experts make comfortable careers from assuring one of the heirs their interpretation of what is just is right. I have spoken before about how for centuries this debate was determined by the law of primogeniture: eldest son takes all. Once women achieved largely equal rights and such laws were repealed, the arguments began, and many families never recovered.

For parents who have struggled successfully to accumulate a viable farm acreage, multiple children present a value judgment weighing the integrity of that land against their affection for those offspring. It’s small wonder being able to blame the law of primogeniture became the default solution. Parents had an ironclad out.

I have throughout my life marveled at what I considered blatantly unfair, inefficient, or illogical estate divisions, until I realized I never really understood the family dynamics and private history that underlay such allocations. Even those instances where great care was made to be as even-handed as possible often ended up with fractured family relationships and precarious farm viability.

It has been discouraging to witness. Estates are almost never just an economic problem to be solved. For the heirs, and even the parents, dividing the wealth serves other purposes, from offsetting the life challenges and needs of each offspring to delivering an emotional message of approval or reprimand. Who gets what will be interpreted by the heirs this way regardless.

If ambiguity in the will invites misinterpretation or sadly, litigation, the quiet truth about these wealth transitions becomes obvious. Settling estates too often ends up about settling scores.