I've seen families fall apart because of this poorly supported issue and we need to make a change,' she says.Īlana hopes to encourage young people to start these tricky conversations within their own families using a communications framework she's developing.

'Often you start a succession planning conversation but because dad just can't face up to losing control, which he will do if the property is transferred before his death.' 'The hardest person to convince is what we call the the patriarch, the male father and the head of the family who can be really set in his ways,' he says. Succession lawyer Dr Lindsay Stoddart from Owen Hodge Lawyers says starting a succession conversation early with the whole family is key. 'There is no one answer and all farmers are different.' 'But there are certainly methods you can take like getting it done early and addressing the elephant in the kitchen.' 'A million people want to know the answer to that,' Toby Locke from Young Farmers says.

There are about 86,000 farms in Australia and more than 90 per cent of them are Australian owned and generally run by families, according to the National Farmers Federation.īut over the past 70 years the number of family-run properties in Australia has dropped by two thirds, and there is concern if the farms aren't passed on correctly that number will keep declining. He came back to the property recently after working in Sydney and wants to take it over, but says conversations about how that might happen are rare. Tony Sarks, 29, has been trying to chat to his dad Anthony about the family's strawberry and tomato farm. 'A lot of people have this problem in approaching the law to get it done correctly.' 'If we've got all those documents in place and it's not just a will its powers of attorney. 'I think people have two problems - that is a fear of death - and second, a lot of people have an idea that if they make a will they will bring their death on,' Dr Stoddart says. Not many people like to plan for their death, but that's exactly what succession planning is, according to lawyer Dr Lindsay Stoddart from Owen Hodge Lawyers. 'In a way it's not feasible because if you have an average of a few kids how do you keep breaking the farm down to half every time?' Succession means talking about death

'When you get older it suddenly turns quite tricky,' he says. Toby says even his own family of three brothers are in discussions now on who might take over the family farm in the NSW town of Walcha, near Tamworth. It's one of the biggest challenges and it can split very close families apart.'

Family farm hack