The pillar essay already keeps a short glossary of the three-generation problem. This page does not copy it. It defines the words that keep collapsing into one another on the rest of the site: assembly, council, constitution, office, stewardship, and the letter that is not a will.
Family assembly
The family assembly is the wider room. Owners, spouses, and adult children who are not on a board still hear what was decided and still get a voice. It is a poor place to hire a chief executive or to redo, in the hallway, a vote the smaller body already took. If every cousin attends every working session, the assembly has swallowed the council. The charter should say which room is which. The system those rooms belong to is family governance.
Family council
A family council is a small body that prepares family policy: education, employment of relatives, philanthropy, and how a disagreement is heard. The Family Business Consulting Group, in a 2017 guide, treats the prior question as part of the work: who votes, when, and by what threshold. A council is not the company’s board and it is not, by itself, the legal owner of the assets. Cadence, agenda, and who should be absent are the subject of the family council essay. That essay is a draft until it is published; the definition here stands either way.
Family constitution and family charter
Families and advisers use “constitution” and “charter” for the same kind of document: a written record of purpose, membership, and the path for disagreement. Family Business UK’s May 2025 guide, written for the United Kingdom, calls that document moral intent rather than a legally binding rulebook. It usually sits beside a will, a trust, or a shareholder agreement. It does not replace them. How to draft one is a separate essay. Whether any sentence binds in a given American state is a question for counsel, not for this glossary.
Family office
A family office is the staff and the systems that carry out what the family has already decided: investments, taxes, property, philanthropy, administration. RSM’s checklist states the limit cleanly. The office supports the family’s goals. It does not dictate them. It is not a model you can rank from an article, and this glossary does not quote a fee. The longer distinction is the essay on the office and governance.
Stewardship
Stewardship, on this site, is a moral posture: the wealth is held for a purpose larger than the holder’s comfort. It is not a tax category and it is not a type of trust. James E. Hughes Jr., in the 2004 edition of Family Wealth, asked families to preserve human and intellectual capital along with financial assets. That is a framework, not a statistic. The essay that stays with the posture, across more than one tradition, is the theology of enough. No tradition is declared the winner here.
Ethical will and legacy letter
An ethical will, sometimes called a legacy letter, is a statement of what the writer hopes the money and the family are for. It is not a last will and testament. It does not transfer title. A lawyer drafts the instrument that does. The marriage essay already uses a legacy letter as a practice between spouses. The definition, and the line it must not cross, is the ethical-will essay.
Heir preparation
Heir preparation is the slow work of raising people who can receive responsibility without treating the balance sheet as a personality. It is not a curriculum a family office sells, and this page adds no percentage about “spoiled” children. The essay is raising children with wealth. The pattern those children inherit into is the three-generation problem.
What this page will not define
It will not define a “best” trust, a payout rate, or a fee. Those depend on the year, the vehicle, and the state. Giving vehicles are compared, with United States figures and an explicit refusal of personalized tax advice, in donor-advised funds versus private foundations. Conflict inside the family is the empty chair, not a glossary entry.
Sources
- Family Business UK, Family Councils: A Practical Guide, file path dated May 2025. United Kingdom. PDF.
- Family Business Consulting Group, “What Do Family Councils Do?”, file name dated June 7, 2017. PDF.
- RSM US, family governance checklist, consulted October 2, 2026. rsmus.com.
- James E. Hughes Jr., Family Wealth, 2nd revised edition, 2004. Wiley.