What is a family charter and what should it contain?

A Family Charter is a written framework that captures the family's governance, values, purpose, and action items in one document. Kris Kluver, in The Dysfunctional Family Office, has the Mitchell family build theirs at the end of the retreat. The charter pulls together what the Founder's Mandate established, the values the family identified during the retreat, the purpose statement they wrote together, and the specific commitments coming out of the work. The charter isn't a legal document. It doesn't replace the trust, the will, or the operating agreement. It's the human-language expression of what the family has agreed to, in plain words, that everyone signed and can reference when decisions get hard. Most UHNW families never write one. The families that do come back to the charter regularly when they hit ambiguity.