When I went to see The Descendants, I hadn't read much about the film. I knew only that the performance by the star, George Clooney, had been highly praised by critics and that the director was Alexander Payne, who previous credits include Election, Sideways and About Schmidt. As I sat in the theater, riveted to my seat, I was surprised that the film addressed so many of the issues I encounter each day in my professional life (although, alas, my workdays involve neither Mr. Clooney nor Hawaii, where the action takes place).
In mid-December, I called some family business advisers who also had seen the film to share our thoughts on the issues of wealth and inheritance confronted by the characters.
(Warning: This article contains spoilers. If you haven't yet seen the film — and I highly recommend that you do — stop reading now if you'd prefer not to learn key plot details.)
Many cousins
The film, shot on location, is based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, who grew up in Hawaii. George Clooney's character, Matt King, is one of many cousins in a prominent family descended from the marriage of a Hawaiian princess to a white banker generations ago. Matt, an attorney, is the sole trustee of 25,000 acres of unspoiled land on Kaua'i held in a family trust. Because of the common law rule against perpetuities, the trust is due to expire in seven years.
Matt has lived frugally (too frugally, his father-in-law complains), saving all his income from the trust and living solely off his earnings as a lawyer. Some of his cousins, however, have spent all their trust income. Evidently, few of them work. (“All I have is time,” says one cousin who offers to give Matt and his family a ride on Kaua'i.) Most of the cousins want to sell the family's land quickly.
A subset of the group of cousins has been meeting regularly in Matt's law office to discuss offers for the property. They have rejected the highest bid, from a Chicago group seeking to build big-box stores on the property. Instead, they favor an offer from a Kaua'i man, Don Holitzer, who plans to turn the land into a golf course and residences (though two of the King cousins oppose any sale of the property). A shareholder vote has been scheduled to confirm the family's decision.
At the same time that Matt is pondering the sale of his ancestral property, he is dealing with a devastating situation in his nuclear family. His wife, Elizabeth, lies in a coma after having been injured in an accident on a rented boat. Doctors have told him that she will not recover, and under the terms of her living will she must be taken off life support. By his own admission, Matt up until now has focused primarily on his work and has assumed the role of “back-up parent,” but because of Elizabeth's accident is now serving as single dad to his two daughters: substance-abusing 17-year-old Alexandra and ten-year-old Scottie, who has been acting out at school.
That's a lot for Matt to deal with, but there's more. Matt learns that Elizabeth had been having an affair and at the time of her accident hoped to run off with her paramour. Midway through the movie, Matt learns that the man his wife had been seeing is a real estate agent who is Holitzer's brother-in-law and would stand to profit considerably if the deal the King family favors is closed.
Trustee faces pressure
“The movie portrayed [Matt's] conflict very effectively,” says Allison Shipley, a principal at PwC. “The role of a trustee is really a hard thing to take on.” The responsibilities are especially challenging for a sole trustee acting on behalf of an extended family, Shipley notes. “It's an unbelievable job for that one person,” she says. “There's an incredible amount of pressure.”
“[Matt] was a trustee in so many ways,” observes Justin Zamparelli, a partner at Withers Bergman LLP. “He was even entrusted to protect people's feelings.” For example, Zamparelli notes, Elizabeth's father blames her accident on Matt (speculating that she wouldn't have injured herself if Matt had bought her a boat of her own) and calls her a faithful wife, an assertion that Matt doesn't contradict. In another scene, Matt hosts a gathering for all Elizabeth's friends (notably, no King cousins are present) and invites them to go to the hospital to say goodbye to her — without mentioning her affair and its effect on him. He enlists Alexandra's help in protecting her younger sister's memories of her mother.
I was struck by the portrayal of the extended King family as a group that lives near each other yet is not close-knit. Matt and his daughters run into several King cousins at various points in the movie, but these relatives express only a perfunctory interest in Elizabeth's condition — and none of them offers much in the way of consolation to the young girls whose mother is dying.
Obviously, the King cousins could have benefited from family governance and education efforts. “There doesn't seem to have been any real effort by the family to cement the relationship between the family and the asset,” comments David Lansky, a principal consultant with the Family Business Consulting Group.
The King ancestors, PwC's Shipley observes, had created a trust to preserve their land, but had taken no measures to preserve the family values. “Clearly,” she says, “that family hadn't done anything to reinforce, or even establish, the cultural importance of the land.” Even though the family hadn't inherited a governance structure, Matt could have worked with his relatives to institute one, Lansky points out. “He was the trustee, but he really didn't see himself as the family leader,” Lansky says.
A community's concerns
Throughout the film, local residents whom Matt encounters urge him not to sell the property, and after those conversations an internal conflict registers on Clooney's face. “The whole state of Hawaii had an investment in keeping the land pristine,” FBCG's Lansky notes. “Should [the King family] do anything about that? What does it mean to be a steward?”
The film's dual plot lines — Elizabeth King's marital infidelity and the King cousin consortium's planned infidelity to their legacy — intertwine as Matt takes his daughters (and Sid, a slacker friend of older daughter Alexandra) on a trip to Kaua'i to visit the land and get a look at the man who has been sleeping with his wife.
As the family gazes at the pristine property, Alexandra reminisces about her experiences camping on the land with her mother. (Interestingly, it was her mother — not her father, the parent with the ancestral tie — who instilled in Alexandra a connection to the land.) Younger daughter Scottie plaintively asks, “What about me?”
To PwC's Shipley, that question is a pivotal turning point in the film. Revisiting the family's land, she says, gives Matt “the perspective of the ancestors, and of the daughters.” I agree. Though one can think of several alternative titles for the film, The Descendants is the most appropriate, and that scene demonstrates why this is so.
The family gathers
As Matt prepares the ancestral home for the arrival of his cousins who will gather to vote on the sale, the camera lingers on portraits of his ancestors and other family mementos. The family stakeholders cast their votes and, unsurprisingly, they overwhelmingly favor a sale to Holitzer. In the end, however, Matt refuses to sign the papers. His cousin Hugh (played by Beau Bridges) warns Matt that the family would sue him. “Then I might see more of you,” Matt responds.
The King family, Zamparelli says, “basically were fortunate members of a DNA pool that owned this property; they hadn't earned it. And at the end of the day, I think that was part of [Matt's] decision.”
Of course, there are more alternatives available to the family than just selling or not selling the land. The Kings could work with advisers to find a way to generate some cash from the property while preserving a significant portion as open space. A family council or family office could provide a forum for them to explore such options in the seven years before the trust expires — if, after the contentious vote, the cousins could possibly agree to establish such structures.
Matt never tells his cousins that someone connected with the Holitzer bid had had an affair with his wife. His failure to disclose the relationship would not necessarily help his cousins prevail in a suit against him, attorney Zamparelli says, because Matt did not benefit in a pecuniary way from his decision not to sell — and it would be difficult to prove that the situation was a factor in his decision.
In the film's penultimate scene, Matt and his daughters scatter Elizabeth's ashes at sea. Zamparelli says he was taken by the camera's focus on the serene coastline, followed quickly by a view of unsightly developed land off the coast.
Matt's refusal to sign the papers feels like a victory to the audience in the theater. Whether or not the fictional family ever could come to terms with his action, they certainly would always view it as a pivotal point in their shared history.