A few weeks ago, after the Farmers Journal Tullamore Farm Open Day, I wrote about farm owners Joan and Padraig Grogan.

They had made the decision to lease the farm long term to the Farmers Journal. While most of the focus on the day was what future targets were being set for the farm, I was more interested in looking back to how they made the decisions.

How had they talked to their four children about it? How, after hearing that none wanted to come home to farm (at that time), did they become open to the idea of leasing when the opportunity arose?

The strong message for me was that they started the conversation early and were open to listening to every viewpoint.

As we too well know, it doesn’t often happen like that. One person that certainly knows this is Clare O’Keeffe of Succession Ireland. Clare set up the business to help families start the conversation about succession.

“Ideally, it would be great if families were proactive,” said Clare. Too often she is called in where a major conflict has arisen.

“In most cases, what we see is the position people take in conflict, but the most important thing to deal with is why they got there, what are their real interests and needs,” said Clare.

She linked this to the tip of an iceberg – where the real substance is under the surface.

Clare trained in mediation to give her the skills to identify not what is happening on the surface, but the emotional issues that are lying underneath. How to bring the conversation round and deal with the difficult situations.

She went through a dozen case studies with me on the day we met, that brought out the typical situations. In many cases, problems arose when someone in the family died, especially where a will was not made. What was obvious to me was that lack of communication and not dealing with the real issues made the situation worse over time.

Over the next few weeks I will look at a number of case studies to tease out what we can learn from them. Of course, names and situations have been changed, but they really did and continue to happen.

Case study 1: Who has the power?

Jack and Mary have four children, two boys and two girls. Jack was a good farmer, but things had to be done his way. When he got sick, the second-eldest son, Andy, came home and started milking the cows. Andy started to invest in the farm, building up cow numbers.

When Jack died the farm passed directly to his wife Mary. There was some talk at the time of transferring the farm to Andy. Mary agreed that she would. It was decided for the time being that Andy would pay Mary a rent for the land to look after her expenses. Andy did this and continued to develop the farm, also leasing the neighbour’s farm.

In some years money was tight, so Andy could not pay his mother all the rent. At this stage she had the old age pension, but felt she was always short of money. A relationship developed that Mary seems to keep asking her son to pay for specific things, such as repairing the house or fixing the car.

Over time, this situation began to really annoy Andy and his wife, Ann. When they brought up the land issue with Mary, she would tell them that she would sign over the farm in time, but there was always a list of jobs to be done first.

Clare got a call from Rita (one of the daughters), as she felt things were getting to a breaking point. In fairness, the three other siblings did get involved, but did not want to take sides, as they saw the situation from both viewpoints.

Things got worse, until finally one day Andy decided he would not be “the boy” any more and left to take a full-time job in Dublin in the career that he had left to come home to farm. Mary had to lease out the farm to a local farmer.

As we talked through the case, logic would tell you that Mary, now in her late ’80s, should have handed over the farm. For me, the lesson is that the conversation should have happened when Andy initially came home. A fixed amount should have been agreed to pay his mother, adding to her yearly pension. In all the case studies, it was easy to come up with the solution when you take the emotions out of it.

At a separate conference, where Clare outlined this case study, Maureen Gaffney, a well-know psychologist, was talking afterwards. She returned to the case study and her take on it was interesting. She said the younger generation now takes longer to settle in life – longer to become adults. But when they do, they are in a real hurry to make progress in life. They will not wait around. For Andy, the message that the farm would be his turned from a positive to a negative, as he began to dwell on the issue. He got more annoyed as he felt he was being treated as the boy and progress could not be made. For Mary, Maureen said, it could have been about the fear of losing power. She had lost her husband and if she handed over the farm, the only power she had would be lost. CL

  • >> Next week: The prodigal son returns