Family Constitutions: What to Write, and What to Leave Out

Most family constitutions are long, bank-drafted and unread. The short one a family writes itself is the one it reaches for when a decision splits the family. What belongs in it, what to leave out, and who should hold the pen.

The document most families are sold

Families are told, often and from many directions, that they need a constitution. The advice is sound. What follows it rarely is. The family receives a long, handsome document, drafted by people who do not know them, and places it on a shelf. It is read once, at the meeting where it is presented, and never again.

The pattern is common. Only 39% of families control their own governance model; the rest is run by staff or handed to outside consultants (Campden Wealth, 2025). The gap is not a shortage of documents. It is a shortage of documents the family wrote and actually uses.

A family constitution is worth writing. It is worth writing in a way that survives the meeting it is presented in. That is a different exercise from the one most families are offered.

What a family constitution is

A family constitution is a written statement of how the family makes decisions together. It records what the family is trying to do with its wealth, who holds which decision, and how the family will handle the moments that test it. The terms vary. Some families call it a charter, some a protocol, some a family agreement. The label matters less than what sits inside.

Its size should track the family's. The fullest version, the one that sets out shared values, who counts as a member, and how the whole is governed, is also the most demanding to write. It earns its place in large families spread across branches and generations, and it is not worth attempting until a family is ready for honest conversations with itself. A smaller family needs far less. What every family needs, whatever its size, is to write down who decides what, and who steps in when that person cannot. That much no family should be without.

It is not a legal structure. The trusts, the holding companies, and the shareholder agreements do the legal work. The constitution sits above them and explains why they exist and how the family means to use them. It is not binding the way corporate bylaws are binding. Its authority comes from the family's agreement to it, not from a regulator or a court.

That distinction is the whole point. A constitution carries weight because the family wrote it and means to honour it. Borrow the form of a corporate document and you lose the source of its authority. It is the same reason family governance is not corporate governance: one keeps a family in control of what it built, the other protects outsiders from managers they cannot watch.

Why the long version fails

The failure is predictable, and it starts with who writes it.

A family commissions a constitution from a bank or a law firm. The drafters reach, naturally, for what they know: the language of corporate governance, the comprehensive clause for every contingency, the forty pages that demonstrate diligence. The result reads like a company's articles of association. It is thorough. It is also alien to the family, who recognise neither the voice nor the situations it describes.

So it goes in the drawer. When a real disagreement arrives, nobody reaches for it, because nobody remembers what it says or feels bound by words they did not choose. A charter the family signs without arguing through is decorative, not functional. The longer and more corporate the document, the faster this happens. Complexity is easy to sell and expensive to live with. A constitution that anticipates every edge case answers questions the family will never ask and stays silent on the ones it will.

The test of a family constitution is not how complete it looks. It is whether the family opens it when something goes wrong.

What actually belongs in it

A constitution that holds tends to be short, and it tends to answer a handful of real questions. The work is to settle these honestly, not to cover every theoretical case. Some families keep the answers in one document. Others hold them as a few focused ones. The names matter less than the answers.

The purpose of the wealth. What is this capital for, across generations? A family that has agreed what its wealth should stand for has the anchor every later decision refers back to. Skip this, and the document becomes a set of rules with nothing holding them together.

Who decides what. This is the part to write first. Set out which decisions belong to the family, which to the office, which to a committee, who has the final word when the family is split, and who steps in when the named person cannot. If a family agrees only one thing, agree this. Most disputes are not about the decision itself. They are about who had the right to make it.

How members join and work. Whether and how family members take roles in the office or the business, and on what terms. Most families have no written answer here. Eight in ten operate without an employment policy for family members (UBS, 2026). The absence is felt the first time a member wants a job and another member objects.

How members leave. The terms on which a member can sell or step away. An organised internal market for shares keeps an exit from forcing a fire sale or trapping the rest of the family in joint ownership they never chose. The first exit sets the precedent for every one that follows, so the rule is best agreed before anyone needs it.

How disputes are settled. A short, agreed path for disagreement, decided while the family is calm. Two-thirds of family offices have no formal way to resolve conflict (Campden Wealth, 2025). They write the rule in the middle of the argument, which is the worst moment to write it.

Five questions, answered plainly, in language the family uses. That is a constitution a family will open.

Who writes it

The family writes it. This is the part most often skipped, and it is the part that decides whether the document lives.

A constitution drafted for the family, in someone else's voice, belongs to the drafter. A constitution the family argues through and writes in its own words belongs to the family. The arguing is not a side effect to be minimised. It is where the agreement is actually made. The conversations a family has while deciding what to write are usually more valuable than the document they produce. Each member learns what the others want, and what they will not accept, while there is still room to shape it.

A neutral hand helps. Someone who can run the conversation, hold the structure, and keep the discussion moving without owning the outcome lets the family do the deciding. That is facilitation, not drafting. The family stays the author, and the words stay theirs.

When to write it, and keeping it alive

The moment that prompts a constitution is usually a transition. A succession comes into view, a liquidity event reshapes the balance sheet, or a new generation begins to take responsibility. These are the points where the unwritten understandings of the founding generation stop being enough, because the people who held them in their heads are handing over.

A constitution written once and filed dies quietly. The families whose constitutions still mean something revisit them. They read the document when the family changes, when a new member comes of age or a branch grows, and they amend it when reality has moved past the page. A living document the family returns to is worth far more than a perfect one it wrote once and forgot.

The family decides

A family constitution does not make decisions for a family. It records how the family has agreed to make them, and it holds only for as long as the family keeps choosing to honour it. The job is not to produce an impressive document. It is to help a family write a short one, in its own words, that it will reach for when the week goes wrong. Westwick works this way: we help the family hold the conversation and write the rules, and the words stay theirs.

This article is part of our series on family governance. The reference piece for the series: Governing Families, Not Corporations — the Westwick white paper.