Advice on family dynamic situation

In My Humble Opinion
1

OK dopers, counting on the anonymity of the internet here for some free advice. I’m going to try to summarize this situation as best I can.

My in-laws are co-owners of a small construction business. Their business partner is my FIL’s deadbeat brother. My in-laws are hard-working people who have basically kept the company profitable through sheer tenacity for the last 30 years while the deadbeat brother has worked half the hours, bought twice as many houses, 8 times as many cars, embezzles money, and is still mired in debt to the point where we’re all pretty sure he’s months away from bankruptcy. It’s been frustrating to watch them tolerate this arrangement for the last 15 years, but disfunctional family is disfunctional and I’m not going to stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong.

Until now, maybe. Deadbeat brother has 2 kids, one who’s shaping up to be a deadbeat just like dad, and the younger one who somehow managed to find a fantastic girl several years ago who basically turned his life around. They’re both in their senior year of college and plan to marry as soon as they graduate.

Kid2 intends to take over the family business some day. The problem is that when he works there (summers and whatnot), he shadows his deadbeat dad. He has a vision of the company that involves 6 hour days and living a lifestyle that’s not really possible. Consequently, my FIL, who essentially runs the entire company, projects all of his hatred for his brother on Kid2, and isn’t at all excited about the prospect of Kid2 becoming another mooch. FIL and Kid2 haven’t sat down to discuss the future at all, and I’m pretty sure FIL is actively avoiding the situation, hoping that Kid2 will either go away or suddenly become a hard worker with absolutely no guidance whatsoever.

The ticking clock here is that they’re both going to graduate soon, and Kid2’s fiance is in a career field with ample job opportunities, but not in the city they currently live in. If they stay where they are, she’ll basically have to abandon her career while Kid2 goes to work in this toxic environment. If they move, she can get a good job, and he’ll have to start a career from scratch.

I wouldn’t mind if Kid2 ultimately decides to work for the company – it is a family business, after all. But I feel like there’s a lot of information assymetry here. I feel like, at a minimum, Kid2 needs to figure out how much of a deadbeat his dad really is, and how much prejudice he’s going to have to overcome to get on his uncle’s good side. My current plan is to lay out some of this info for Kid2, and then encourage him to sit down with his Uncle to confirm/deny some of it and figure out if this is actually a good fit for him. I could just do the second part, but I’m afraid if he doesn’t have at least some of this background info, he’s not going to ask the right questions.

Is that too much meddling? My wife is on board with this, and we’ve grown pretty close with Kid2 and his girlfriend, if that changes anything.

2

Well, I don’t know if it’s too much meddling - do you and your wife actually have any stock in the company? Do either of you work there or plan to work there? I’m unclear on a number of items:

  1. Why doesn’t FIL talk to lazy bro?
  2. Why is nephew of FIL automatically assumed to be taking over the company - does FIL get no say?
  3. Is it expected that when nephew takes over he will be FIL’s boss? Or partner? Or what? Is lazy bro going to retire?

None of these things are clear and why you would involve yourself isn’t clear either.

3

Kid2 would be better off striking it out on his own, imho. There’s no need to take over somebody else’s problems, and once he gets involved, he’ll feel that he will need to stay involved, if merely to “help Dad”.

4

  1. FIL has avoided addressing his lazy brother for 30 years. I don’t know why he’s afraid of talking to his nephew, but he’s mentioned that he expects the kid to take some initiative or something. I can’t say what’s going through his head, but his refusal to talk is definitely in line with his past behavior.

  2. FIL gets a say, and perhaps final say, but FIL inherited the business from his parents, who are still alive and still own part of the company, and I think everyone just kind of assumes that some day the grandkids will run the company. It’s not like FIL is going to get ousted any time soon, but there’s a lot of assuming by many different parties and no one seems to be talking about how it’s all going to shake out.

  3. My assumption is that FIL and deadbeat brother will both still hold their respective positions while nephew/son “learns the ropes.” Then they’ll retire in the next 5-10 years. But again, this is me assuming things, because nobody’s talking.

My only stake is that I like the kid and I don’t want to see him make a bad decision just because the “adults” in the situation kept him in the dark. We’ve been hanging out more lately, and I know he respects my opinion.

5

I would advise against trying to get Kid2 to see the light about his dad’s poor work ethic. Some life lessons people need to learn on their own, and the sooner they learn them, the sooner they can recover and move on.

IMO, the toxic build-up at Kid2’s dad’s company is immaterial. Ignore that situation entirely and counsel him about navigating his most important relationship, the one with his girlfriend.

If Kid2 is serious about building a long-term relationship with her, then talk to him about communicating with his girlfriend to discover what is important to them in terms of long-term career objectives and opportunities, whether they plan to start a family, how and when they want to retire, etc. This keeps the focus on Kid2 discovering and choosing (in consultation with his SO) what he wants to move towards, as opposed to trying to talk him into moving away from something you think he should avoid. (Personally, I agree the situation you outlined sounds like a bad choice for him.)

Best of luck and thanks for caring about Kid2’s future.

6

This board is a huge fan of “MYOB”, so that’s probably what you’re going to hear, but if you are more concerned about the welfare of the kid and less about the shitstorm that may be unleashed, then I don’t see why not. It’s an important point that your wife is on board. Do you feel like she fully appreciates the drama risk here?

I wouldn’t sit down with kid and FIL or Uncle, though. Just talk to kid one on one. Emphasize that you’re sharing this info with him precisely because you think he’s capable of navigating the hornet’s nest and making a go of it.

7

I would normally agree with that, but it sounds like the stakes are pretty high here - Kid2 learns how lazy his dad is by bankrupting the company.

My advice would be to sit down with Kid2 and tell him something like, “This isn’t really my business, and I’m only going to talk about this once, then it will be a closed topic on my end - you need to know that your uncle works A LOT harder than your dad, and that’s why Dysfunctional Family Construction is still in business. If you’re going to take over the business, you need to talk with your uncle about what running the business actually entails.”

8

Maybe you could encourage kid2 to shadow FIL also, and not just his dad, “so he’ll know how all the business runs”. That would be reasonable in any case.

9

Also reasonable would be advising him to work for another construction company first. That way he can learn how it’s done elsewhere and he can learn the ropes without wondering if he’s being protected from failure or pushed/judged too hard because he’s family.

10

My advice to Kid#2 would be to plan on taking over the family business after first striking out and working in related industries elsewhere, with the thinking that his skill sets, experience, and broadened perspective would give him a better toolbox for running a company business. In other words, “Prove yourself to yourself outside the family first. Then, when you come back to run the company, you will have the benefit of perspective and experience you wouldn’t have gotten while still sheltered within the family cocoon.”

College graduates are advised to attend grad school at a different school from where they got their undergrad degree because you develop better depth and range of experience. And so it goes with running a family business. He may have experiences that teach him that Dysfunctional Family Construction isn’t really all that awful (especially if all the key players actually pull their own weight) or he might learn that he needs to come in, strategize with FIL, clean house, and turn it all around. That he would have to essentially push his own father out of the business is his problem, and one I think he shouldn’t deal with until he’s got a bit more maturity and experience under his belt. He’s going to have to navigate a minefield of not only workplace politics, but family politics as well. He needs outside experience to be able to better cope.