If my kids had to guess my intentions for them right now, would they guess correctly?

Probably not, even if you've been a present parent. Most founders carry detailed intentions in their head and assume the kids have absorbed them through proximity. They haven't. Kids guess based on what they observe, which is often the founder's behavior under stress, not the founder's actual hopes. Kris Kluver, in The Dysfunctional Family Office, asks founders to test this directly. Sit each adult child down and ask what they think you want for them. The answers usually surface a wide gap between what the founder believes they've communicated and what the kid actually heard. The Founder's Mandate exists to close that gap explicitly, in writing, while the founder is still alive to clarify it.