Succession Obsession

****SPOILER ALERT***** Do not read this article unless you are up to date with Succession series four.

Anyone else completely gripped with the fourth series of Succession? Love them or hate them the Roy family are absolutely captivating, and completely dysfunctional. Fans of the show will know it centres around the media mogul Logan Roy, and his family who are all fighting for the control of Waystar RoyCo.

Since series one there has been the underlying story around the ‘trust’ and the administering of the estate, intrinsically focused on who will be Logan’s successor when he dies. From the offset there has been contentious situations, starting off with an altercation around documents the beneficiaries (Roy children) needed to sign to give their step mother the majority vote when it comes to deciding who will take the helm upon Logan’s death.

Fast forward to series four, and the plot lines have been heavy, with twists and turns in terms of CEOs, COOs, board members, bad mothers, addiction, the list goes on – thankfully we have Tom and Greg to lighten the mood somewhat and take the edge off.

Anyway, its episode four and Logan has just died quite unexpectedly on a plane to Sweden, we are at some sort of elite wake where in one room people are mourning, another room Willow and Connor are planning their new décor for Logan’s abode and upstairs there is ‘trustee’ meeting in full swing, tentatively and quite amusingly discussing the ‘letter of wishes’ that has just been found in Logan’s safe.

Underlined or crossed out? that is the question.

This is where we sat up with our little lawyer hats on, in terms of amendments to the document. It looked to us like a letter of wishes which as we know isn’t something that is legally binding here (the obligation is derived from the Will or Codicil). However, in our experience, most executors and trustees will follow it to the letter to avoid criticism from the beneficiaries or the court.

Executors hold the deceased’s estate on trust for the beneficiaries so they have an important fiduciary role as ‘trustee’ over their assets

So, the fact that he underlined or crossed out Kendal’s name is potentially a really significant piece of information. So how should Logan’s executors deal with this problem – in our view, they did exactly the right thing!  By getting all of the beneficiaries in a room and saying what do we do about this, lets decide together, they created a situation where they could not be criticised for failing to take everything into account when making decisions. Clever and good cover.

Another piece to connect was that Kendall needed to gain the acceptance of the other beneficiaries, Roman and Shiv. With the ongoing sibling rivalry stirring through the show, this was no mean feat, finally agreeing that Roman would take the top spot with him.

It looks like they did the right thing on this occasion, but remember, you cant make a Tomlette without breaking some Greggs!

Being an executor and administering an estate can be a complicated affair, but this one certainly takes some stamina. Looking forward to how this will transpire, we can’t see everyone keeping the peace for long, can you?