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Advisers can become part of the family conflict without realising it

Advising Families in Conflict: staying neutral inside multigenerational alliances and resentments

Wealth managers, trustees, attorneys and family-office professionals are often expected to remain neutral while working inside a network of alliances, resentments and multigenerational expectations. Without understanding the family system, an adviser can be pulled towards one relative, used to carry another person’s message or blamed for tensions that began long before the engagement. Mercy’s perspective is shaped by direct, on-the-ground experience sitting with families in active conflict, rather than observing the dynamics solely through financial or legal decisions. She helps professionals understand their position within the system so they can support progress without becoming another participant in the struggle.

About Mercy Burton Russell

Mercy Burton Russell, podcast guest

Family Systems Psychotherapist, Consultant & Intergenerational Wealth Dynamics Specialist

40 years Psychiatry, therapy, education and consulting32 years Study of Bowen Family Systems TheoryMSW, EdD Doctorate in Educational Policy and LeadershipClinical training UCLA

Mercy Burton Russell helps families understand what happens when money, property, responsibility, and family relationships become entangled. Trained as a psychotherapist and specializing in multigenerational family systems, she works at the point where technical planning meets the emotional life of a family.

Mercy’s expertise is shaped through clinical training at UCLA, postgraduate study in Bowen Family Systems Theory, doctoral study of leadership and decades of work with individuals, families, and organizations.

Early in her career, she studied with Dr. Ann Bunting before continuing her training at the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family. Bowen theory is the foundation of her clinical practice, leadership and organizational consultation and international speaking. She works with a rigorous framework for understanding how anxiety, conflict and responsibility move through families across generations.

Her focus on wealth transfer developed from observing how financial anxiety reflects family dynamics. Investments, trusts, inheritance and ownership decisions rarely remain technical matters. They are shaped by loyalty, identity, sibling relationships, marriage and expectations carried across generations. Firsthand, she has experienced different family cultures around wealth. Her insight into underlying relational patterns predicts and corrects conflict emerging from even the strongest financial and legal planning.

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