What sections should a complete Family Charter actually contain?

The Founder's Mandate. Family values. Family purpose. Action items from the retreat. Kris Kluver, in The Dysfunctional Family Office, has the Mitchell family build their charter around exactly these four components after their first retreat. The Mandate captures the founder's intentions. The values capture the family's True North. The purpose statement captures what the family is for. The action items capture the specific commitments coming out of the work. Beyond those four, families typically add governance rules, compensation framework, investment criteria, family meeting cadence, and family rituals. The charter expands as the family does the work and shrinks where simplicity serves better than detail. The right charter isn't long. It's used. A two-page charter that the family actually references is better than a fifty-page document that sits in a drawer.