What else could F possibly be for? But, by crikey, families are funny things. There is an idiom, “you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family” and how true that is. Personally, I have been pretty lucky on the family front, especially the close ones. Ma & Pa FWL regularly assist in the day-to-day runnings of FWL from the Dorset Office and have even been known to bring business back to the office when they have been out networking!
We work with families. Lots of them. And they all differ in shape, size and ‘functionality’. For example, we recently contacted one lady who thought she had been adopted and we had to break it to her that in fact she was fostered and that she was one of sixteen children of her birth parents. Quite a surprise but we were delighted to receive her documents and letter telling us that we had made her “a very happy lady”!
Sometimes families are close and, when an inheritance arises, they communicate and decide collectively which company they will choose to act for them. Others are not in touch or even able to assist with addresses/telephone numbers and it is not unheard of for family members to actively choose a different company to their other family members. When we make contact, we have no idea the lie of the land…. and that is often a story in itself.
In other situations, we work with clients who have no idea who or where their birth family may be…. they may have a name or names, but no more. Opening Pandora’s Box can be a tough decision as you never know what you might unearth. Will your birth mother and father still be alive? If they are, will they want to be reunited with you? If they don’t, how will you deal with that? If they are no longer with us, what next? What are your goals? What do you hope to achieve from your research into your birth family?
Family, for some people, is a focal point in their lives. However, in this day and age, people move further away from the family nest, for various reasons, and this frequently means that families ‘grow apart’.
When was the last time you contacted your sibling/cousin/aunt/uncle….? Would you be able to provide (if needs be) contact details for all members of your close family?
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