Extended families, as well as family businesses, thrive with the modern age’s life expectancy. However, alongside this blessing, dilemmas and difficulties arise among the elderly and other family members. Often, families, as well as family businesses, find themselves facing real challenges. Coping with these challenges requires reaching agreements, and sometimes the difficulty in reaching agreements is accompanied by severe disagreements to the point of breaking the relationship, loss of family ties, legal proceedings, and pecuniary damages.

The firm's Intergenerational Mediation Department, coordinated by Adv. Ram Walzer, has been trained, specialized and accumulated experience in accompanying families and family businesses facing these challenges, or who wish to plan so that these challenges may not threaten the integrity of the family or the continued prosperity of the family business in the future.

Examples of work in the intergenerational field :

• A property owner living abroad, whose assets are managed by a Family Office, is interested in regulating the way her business is conducted for the coming years, and the way in which the estate is managed as well as the division of the inheritance when her day comes. Her heirs to be are her son and grandchildren (the sons of her daughter) who live in Israel and her spouse who is a foreign resident.
• A couple has been married for many years. The woman passed away, and after about a year the man has a new partner, who moves in with him. The couple’s daughter encourages the relationship and the son resists and threatens to cut off contact.
• A father who was the mainstay of the family, became disabled. The mother and three daughters are unable to reach an agreement on how to properly care for the father, and in the midst of the controversy, old grudges from the past emerge.
• A family company, owned together by two brothers. Over the years members of the younger generation have been integrated into the company. The health of one of the partners deteriorates, and in a short time, a thriving company may find itself in serious trouble.
  Accompanying the sibling partners in forward-looking planning, using a variety of tools and areas of expertise, before integrating the younger generation and before the deterioration of medical conditions, will greatly reduce the chances of disputes.

Adv. Ram Walzer mediates in the civil and commercial fields and coordinates the firm's intergenerational practice. Ram interned at Platt, Bergerson, Warshai Ramon Yitzhak, a corporate real estate firm.  In 1992, Ram joined the Prime Minister's Office, held a number of core positions and served as a member of the senior management forum. In 2011, Ram was appointed to serve as the (first) Commissioner of Biometric Applications (a statutory position, in which he led extensive inter-ministerial and inter-organizational activity and acquired unique experience in the fields of biometrics and digital identification at the national level).

Ram has specialized and gained experience in intergenerational mediation, both in our firm and in community mediation centers.