A family can have an investment policy statement, an estate plan, and a carefully drafted trust and still struggle to answer a simple question: What’s all this money for?

That question sits at the center of Alex Kirby’s conversation with Jill Shipley, Managing Director and Head of Governance and Education at AlTi Tiedemann Global. Jill has spent nearly 25 years working with multigenerational families. She’s seen what happens when the financial structures are sound but the people affected by them don’t understand the intention behind them.

AlTi’s Wealth with Intention research gives the conversation urgency: 48% of surveyed family offices reported a clearly defined, implemented purpose-of-wealth strategy in 2026, up from 33% in 2025. But a purpose statement alone isn’t the goal. What matters is whether a family can use its purpose to make better decisions and give each generation a meaningful role in what comes next.

The “Soft Stuff” Is the Hard Stuff

Jill remembers a time when she felt she had to persuade both advisors and families to talk about meaning and purpose. The industry called it the “soft stuff.” Her response: it’s actually the hard stuff.

Performance, tax strategy, and investment allocation are essential. But those disciplines don’t answer why a family is building wealth, what it hopes the wealth will make possible, or how its decisions will affect relationships across generations. Those questions demand more than a model or a document. They ask people to talk honestly about values, expectations, and fears.

Jill’s starting question is refreshingly plain: “What do you want the money to do for you, for your family, for future generations, for the community and the world?” It’s a better opening than assuming every family’s purpose is simply to preserve and grow what it has.

For an advisor, that changes the sequence of work. First, find out what the family wants the wealth to accomplish. Then use the investment policy statement, estate plan, philanthropy, and governance structures to support it. As Alex frames it in the episode, performance is the engine; purpose gives it direction.

Why “More” Isn’t Enough

Why is purpose becoming a more prominent part of wealth conversations? Jill points in part to millennials and Gen Z. As more younger family members gain a voice, she sees them asking how the family’s values show up in real decisions, not just whether the assets will keep growing.

That’s Jill’s perspective on a generational shift, not a claim that every young person wants the same thing. But it does raise a practical question for advisors: who gets to help define the purpose? AlTi’s research says 65% of family offices identify guiding the rising generation as a reason to define purpose, while only 17% describe rising-generation members as very engaged in shaping it. Families want engagement, but wanting it isn’t the same as inviting it.

Jill’s advice is to ask younger family members what they’re interested in learning and where they’d actually like to participate. Don’t begin with a program their parents designed and then wonder why they don’t seem excited. A first step could be as small as giving them a budget and letting them plan a family gathering. They gain a real choice and a chance to practice responsibility without being asked to manage the family’s largest decisions on day one.

When Good Plans Produce Bad Outcomes

A family might tell its advisor, “We want this wealth to be good for our children.” Then everyone gets busy with the trusts, tax planning, and investment work. The harder conversation about what “good” means gets postponed.

Jill has seen the consequences. When a family focuses on generating more and minimizing taxes without agreeing on what it’s trying to accomplish, beneficiaries may inherit structures they don’t understand and choices they can’t meaningfully influence. Instead of feeling supported, they may feel frustrated or infantilized. Parents and grandparents may have intended exactly the opposite.

This doesn’t mean the technical work is the problem. It means technical excellence can’t compensate for an unanswered human question. Before recommending a structure, an advisor can ask: “What do you hope this makes possible for your children? What do you worry it might prevent?” Those answers won’t replace legal advice, but they give the legal and investment teams a clearer brief.

The Irony of a Trust Fund

Jill points out the irony in the name: a trust structure meant to care for the next generation can leave beneficiaries feeling as if nobody trusts them.

Her argument isn’t that families should do away with trusts or safeguards. It’s that they should examine what those safeguards communicate and whether they help achieve the wealth creator’s stated hope. If the goal is for children and grandchildren to grow into capable stewards, can the structure create room for voice, choice, and increasing autonomy?

She also challenges the idea that stewardship means preserving everything exactly as it was received. Wealth can be put to work for a living family, with members who will face opportunities and challenges their ancestors couldn’t predict. The founder can explain the original “why,” but each generation needs room to ask what that purpose means in its own time.

Don’t Force Family Togetherness

It’s tempting to treat family unity as the outcome of good governance. Create a board, set recurring meetings, give everyone a role, and assume connection will follow. Jill thinks the order matters more than that.

“We have to start with individual wellness before we go to force togetherness,” she tells Alex. A family member may care deeply about their relatives without wanting their life defined by a foundation, business, or committee they had no part in creating. If participation feels like a room with no door, even a well-intentioned structure can create the urge to leave.

Start by learning what each person values and what kind of involvement they want. Then explore the overlap between their individual purpose and any shared family purpose. Independence and interdependence don’t have to be opposites, but an advisor can’t assume that one family mission will fit every person in the same way.

Make Space for Honest Conversations Early

When should families start talking to children about wealth? Jill doesn’t offer a universal age. Maturity differs, and the best opportunities often come from ordinary moments rather than a formal curriculum.

She shares the story of an eight-year-old who felt terrible after a school assignment asked what airline she’d flown on for spring break. She wrote “American Airlines,” although her family had flown on its own plane. The issue wasn’t a child needing a lesson in asset allocation. It was a child trying to make sense of privilege, honesty, and how other people might see her.

That’s a conversation parents can’t solve by staying silent. Jill encourages age-appropriate honesty and role modeling from an early age. Advisors can support parents by helping them prepare for these moments: What would you want your child to understand about your family’s resources? How can you acknowledge that your circumstances are different without making wealth the whole of their identity?

The goal isn’t to tell children everything at once. It’s to give them a truthful, usable understanding as their questions and responsibilities grow.

Turn Purpose Into Practice

For Jill, the “magic” of a purpose statement is less in the final sentence than in the conversation that creates it. But the work can’t stop when the statement is finished. A purpose the family can’t recall or use isn’t giving much direction.

An advisor can bring it back into the decisions already on the calendar. If a family says it values education, autonomy, community, or time together, ask how those priorities should affect the next trust discussion, investment decision, family meeting, or philanthropic choice. When the answer changes, the purpose can evolve too.

Not every advisor needs to facilitate the hardest family conversation alone. Jill distinguishes an effective facilitated meeting from an hour spent talking at a family: a skilled facilitator speaks with people beforehand, sets ground rules, makes room for every voice, and follows up afterward. That kind of support can matter when a family has good intentions but can’t yet talk freely about them.

The next client conversation doesn’t need to start with an elaborate workshop. It can start with Jill’s question: “What do you want the money to do?” Then listen long enough to find out whether the plans already in place are moving the family in that direction.

Listen to the Full Episode

• The full conversation with Emily Harper and Jessica Gibbs is available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

• If this episode gave you a new way to think about starting family wealth conversations, subscribe to Visionary Advisor and share it with another advisor who wants to help families do legacy better.

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