Throughout the year, my thoughts are on conflict resolution. Most of my work involves mediation, the type of conflict or dispute “resolution” where a dispute has come to a head and needs to be resolved effectively. Yet this time of year we hear a lot about New Year’s Resolutions. This type of “resolution” is more […]
Read more...Two days ago, Kiplinger published a great online article by Jennifer Anderson, “The Family Money Talk You Must Have — Your adult kids should know about your finances and what they can expect.” The article stresses how important — even if difficult — it is for parents to talk to their adult children about estate […]
Read more...You might not think, at first glance, that evolution would have anything at all to do with family wealth conflicts. Granted, my perspective isn’t universal, but an October 13, 2013 article in the New York Times suggests that it does. The article, “Evolution and Bad Boyfriends”, written by Piet van den Berg and Tim W. […]
Read more...On October 21, from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m., NE-ACR will present its fall program in collaboration with Harvard’s Program on Negotiation. Erica Fox, President of Mobius Executive Leadership and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School will discuss her new book “Winning From Within: A Breakthrough Method of Leading, Living, and Lasting Change”. More information […]
Read more...The family vacation home can be the repository of years of treasured family memories; it can also be a family’s downfall. When parents are making plans to leave a family vacation home to their adult children, it can be easy to assume that the memories of the good times and the beauty of the surroundings […]
Read more...Earlier this month, the 89-year-old son of Brooke Astor, Anthony Marshall, finally entered prison to begin the prison sentence meted out upon his conviction for stealing tens of millions of dollars from his mother. Prosecutors charged that he and an Astor family lawyer had tricked the elderly woman into changing her will for Marshall’s benefit. […]
Read more...On April 29, the New England Chapter of the Association for Conflict Resolution held its annual meeting in Wellesley, MA and presented a program by Emily Gould of Empatia Resolutions, in Montpelier, VT. The annual meeting was brief, and at that time I ended my term as president and began a one-year term as secretary. […]
Read more...Several weeks ago, Connecticut Gov. Malloy was quoted as using the phrase “Getting to Yes or Getting to No Quickly.” He was applying this idea to the state’s foreclosure mediation program. Gov. Malloy was talking about the value of having consistent participants in each case, instead of a rotating cast of representatives of banks who […]
Read more...Ten days ago, after a short-term solution to the “fiscal cliff” was announced, the New York Times ran an article by James B. Stewart titled “In Budget Talks, Getting to ‘Yes’”. Stewart had interviewed various academic experts on the negotiation approaches that the Republicans and Democrats had been employing. Suffice it to say that the […]
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