For a lot of farm families, the in-laws quickly become the outlaws due to factors you’d never consider.
After a decade of sorting out the direst farm succession and farm debt cases, I have found that dysfunctional in-law relationships are often a key underlying ingredient to these problems. Really good families are hit by landmines of the in-law kind, and everything explodes. If these families knew what those landmines were before they stepped into them, they would have been able to avoid them.
Here are five of those landmines I hope farm families who have unwed successors will be ready for:
1. If the person they marry is the first big decision your son or daughter has made in their lives, don’t expect who they pick as a spouse to be a good one or at least one you agree with
The brain’s development of an executive cognitive function requires being challenged by difficult decisions and learning from those decisions. If your 23-year-old is living in a sheltered environment where the family pays for housing, every minute of their day is planned, and he or she doesn’t even have to decide what they are eating for lunch because mom is cooking it, how are they supposed to make a stellar executive decision like picking out the best in a bar on a Saturday night?
You don’t need your son or daughter negotiating the purchase of combines or farms to improve cognitive development. Focus on them controlling their time and learning from their mistakes. Don’t have them show up to work and tell them what to do. Have a meeting on Monday and Thursday mornings where the son or daughter (not the parents) writes out on a whiteboard what the jobs are that must get done on the farm over the next three days and then rank their priority. Provide critical feedback after they have a tentative plan laid out by asking questions, not telling them what they didn’t yet consider. Three days later, hold them accountable to do what they said they’d do and have them learn from their mistakes in time management. That way, they learn to critically think and become their own boss. By your son or daughter wisely controlling his or her time, they’ll not only become more efficient, but gain confidence and wisdom which helps them make better-quality decisions on Saturday night.
This should not only be a learning experience for son or daughter, but a way for the parents to accept the fact that their kids are not kids anymore and need to make their own decisions. There are many parents who have an extremely hard time letting go of control, including the control of their own son’s or daughter’s decisions. The event of your son or daughter making a big life decision that you haven’t made for them is a profound experience. Don’t let this milestone event be the choice of a spouse because you certainly don’t want that person to become the scapegoat of your parents' control issues. The key is to get your family used to your successor making different decisions than the parents would make and respect those decisions well before any potential spouse comes into the picture.
2. Avoid the sister-wives scenario
My father-in-law was a skinny man until he got married. Then he had to eat one meal at his mother’s and then a second meal at home with his newlywed wife to keep the peace between the two women, who were silently having a turf war on the farm. True story.
On many family farms, the mother dotes on her son in his early 20s, doing everything from cooking most of his meals to cleaning his bachelor farmhouse. In her empty nester years, what Mom does with her time shifts so that looking after her son becomes the center of her identity. Many times, the daughter-in-law moves onto the home farm and paints the walls a way that severely irritates a mother who feels hurt by someone redecorating her former home. On a lot of dairies, Mom’s responsibilities are to do the farm’s books and look after the calves, which are often the first jobs given to a newlywed daughter-in-law to take over. Many well-meaning daughters-in-law try to help their mothers-in-law with the calves. But the moment they suggest a different way of doing things, the relationship becomes adversarial. In other words, when a bride comes onto the farm, she is often unknowingly pushing her mother-in-law out of her role on the farm, and that’s a direct threat to Mom’s center of identity. If Mom doesn’t have her boy to feed every day, and now she doesn’t have the calves to feed every morning, where does she fit in on the farm?
From Day 1, you need to establish a professional framework, so Mom never dotes on her son and accidentally creates a “second wife type” of scenario. When your son returns home from college, the first step should be for him to live somewhere else and do his own cooking, cleaning and laundry. Don’t allow him to set foot under Mom’s kitchen table for more than two meals a week, just as if he worked at the neighbors'. If your daughter-in-law takes over a job responsibility on the farm, for at least the first three years, make sure it is a job currently done by an employee and isn’t a role Mom is currently doing.
3. Learn to live within your means
Most farms pay their sons and daughters a token salary so they can have enough to have some spending money on weekends. The family wants to keep the capital invested in the farm and expects the successor to draw only what is needed. Theoretically, this seems fine, but the issues come up five years later, when the farm is not only paying for a huge wedding but also renovating that old farmhouse, and the list goes on and on. This creates a sense of entitlement and opens a can of worms that families just don’t expect, especially when there are other siblings involved in the operation and turf wars begin.
Keep the next generation’s personal and business finances separate. I believe that from Day 1, your son or daughter should get paid a fair, hourly wage by the farm that reflects the going rate in your county or what your average employee is paid, whichever is more. Have your son or daughter live by a Dave Ramsey-type program (or whatever financial guru you like) where they learn from a financial coach to aggressively manage their money using a disciplined process. For any potential spouse, make it a family rule of thumb that they must get into a similar financial program prior to any wedding rings being pulled out. Both your son or daughter and their spouse should be striving for an excellent personal credit score before they are 30 because, let’s face it, they may someday want to buy a farm, and they should not need to have the farm be a joint signer.
While still single, I suggest your son or daughter must learn to live on 50% of what they make – because once they get married and have kids, their expenses are going to double. That 50% savings should be what pays for a wedding, future home renovations and personal emergencies that are bound to happen because no employer would normally cover those expenses, although that is the case on a lot of farms. Doing this will help your successor learn to manage money like a finite resource and learn to make difficult financial decisions like sacrificing a honeymoon for the upgrade of a kitchen. In the long run, this will develop a successful farm manager who is able to make 1+1 = 4 when money is tight.
On the flip side, you’d be shocked by how many farmers talk about their daughters-in-law living lavishly and at the same time grossly underestimate their own household draw. If parents really want to get along with their future in-laws, they’d implement a Dave Ramsey-type of program themselves and practice what they preach.
For non-farming siblings, there is often subtle financial jealousy of the successor who stays at home to farm with their parents. If you want non-farming siblings to give the successor a financial break on the purchase price of Grandpa’s farm from their parents' estate, proving to them that he or she is financially frugal and can handle money responsibly is critical. Creating this trust shouldn’t be done the week of estate planning, but from Day 1 of a sibling’s farming career. Successors should have an annual financial plan and records of proper stewardship to show non-farming family members. Your siblings probably will say they don’t want this information, but this is a situation where being overly transparent is a good thing. If your siblings see that you lived frugally on a personal income that is less than theirs, then they are a lot less likely to be jealous when they see that you bought a jet ski or went on a weeklong vacation.
4. Get succession figured out before a spouse shows up
Although it’s never talked about in the rural community, succession is one of the leading underlying problems for millennial farm marriages falling apart. With over 50% divorce rate, why not do everything you can to eliminate potential landmines in a marriage? I strongly suggest that by the time the farm’s successor has put 9,000 hours into the farm, there should be a clearly laid out business and succession strategy so there are no surprises for mom/dad or successor/spouse. For help with this, visit www.agriculturestrategy.com/blog for my “9,000-Hour Rule” blog post, which lays out one of the first steps I recommend for successors to take to ensure a successful succession down the road. This recommendation doesn’t mean gifting any assets at this time; it just means there is a clear strategy for how your son or daughter can fairly earn equity in the business if they invest their time over the next 30 years.
5. Practice what you preach
Most farmers are Christian, and at most weddings, 1st Corinthians 13 is a key part of the ceremony because we equate charity with love:
Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Charity never faileth
Love and forgiveness are easy to talk about on a church pew, but hard words to live by with your in-laws behind the barn. However, if you use the family farm as the challenging environment to put your faith into practice, you’ll become a better Christian through the experience.
Twenty years ago, I’d laugh at most of the above suggestions and think them silly. Believe me, in-law relations are no joke and can ruin the lives of some of the very best farm families. Getting these common-sense principles in place will prevent a lot of nonsense from happening on your family’s farm.
