Family Financial Trauma. Estrangement. Inheritance.

- FAMILY FINANCIAL TRAUMA is the emotional, psychological, and behavioural distress that endures as a result of significant, chronic, or unexpected financial challenges, torment, distress or financial abuse within a family structure. Family structures are wide and varied. - Family financial trauma may lead to compulsive behaviours, persistent anxiety, feelings of shame, emotional distress, hypervigilance, and physical symptoms including sleep disturbances, tension, or gastrointestinal issues. - Family financial trauma can arise from various factors, including childhood experiences, housing instability, too little money, too much money or exposure to high-conflict discussions regarding money and financial abuse. - Diversity of family structures, including nuclear families, same-sex families, extended and step families, lone-parent families, no child families, reconstituted families, and grandparent families, can all become exceedingly complicated when money is involved. - Family financial trauma arises from the convergence of financial factors, actual or perceived family member control, and the need for independence of different members of the family. Family members may be seen to frequently utilise the financial leverage card in a manner that can be viewed as harmful to relationships to others within the family unit. - Family financial trauma can arise from financial abuse, which involves a partner or family member exerting control over access to money, damaging credit, or imposing debt. Unexpected crises, including job loss, bankruptcy, or natural disasters that result in significant financial setbacks, can lead to financial trauma. - Ongoing pressures from family and financial dependency may represent significant partner, generational and family challenges. - MONEY DYNAMICS exist in every family, relationship, couple, partnership and extended family and is one of the most sensitive topics in people's lives. - We all have varied attitudes and different narratives in regard to money and finance related matters which create challenges and may become highly emotive. - Partners may financially help each other, couples may help each other, married and de facto couples may receive access to funds from their partners, parents may financially help children, grandparents may help grandchildren, siblings may help siblings. - Too many fail to properly document these transactions leading to significant issues and complications within families including disparities in expectations, amounts gifted or borrowed and allocation of resources to various family members. -FAMILY INHERITANCE/ESTATES is a complex and highly sensitive topic, often involving intricate legal, financial, and emotional considerations. - Amid the loss of a loved one, anticipation of receiving an inheritance can lead to conflicts and tensions within families, especially if there are differing expectations or perceptions of fairness. - Disputes among heirs, relating to perceived or actual unequal distributions, complex asset and trust structures, debts, liabilities or executor complications seem more common than not. - FAMILY ESTRANGEMENT involves the difficult decision to limit or sever contact between family members, such as parents, children, and siblings. - This often arises as a necessary measure for self-preservation in response to prolonged actual or perceived abuse, neglect, or unhealthy traumatic dynamics. - Additionally, family estrangement may stem from conflicting generational values or the perceived or actual influence of a partner, resulting in a range of complex emotions. - Estrangement is a common and often misunderstood issue affecting many adults, characterised by considerable grief and stress, as well as varying viewpoints between those who choose to create distance and those who remain.