2-22-08

Media Release

The Hagen Family Tree Farm: Real Life, Real Solutions

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The oldest son, Joe Hagen, Jr., is a successful stockbroker, and about his only interest in the family tree farm is bringing his kids there to visit grandma and grandpa. Alison’s not much better – she’s a globe-trotting photographer who lives some distance away and thinks her parents are trying to control her.

Janice, age 42, actually likes the place and is living there, but she wrestles with some fairly serious drug and alcohol issues – there’s a family consensus that giving her money would be “like giving a drunk the key to the liquor cabinet.” Seth, the youngest boy, might be able to make a go of the place, but where does that leave the other three kids? The land is worth millions, you can’t split a farm four ways, and the other children would like some of their inheritance, too. They aren’t wild about everything going to Seth – although free-spirit Alison wouldn’t mind if the land was given to an environmental group.

And Joe and Mary Hagen, both 75, aren’t getting any younger. So what are they going to do?

Such are the real world dilemmas facing thousands of family forest and farm land owners around the nation, very real concerns that defy simple solutions. The problems, in many cases, are so complex that people just ignore them in the understandable, but futile hope that things will just work out. They wrestle not only with family issues but also estate taxes, legal planning, business structures, management concerns.

In the case of the fictional Joe and Mary Hagen, however, resources are available to help them work through their issues thoughtfully and honestly – not that there is an easy answer. But there are ways to frame the concerns, deal with the personal realities, hold family meetings, try to achieve fairness and equity, and arrive at conclusions that everyone can at least understand and live with.

Because, after all, Joe and Mary Hagen dreamed for most of their life to create a family tree farm and see it go on, create a legacy that could be handed down, and enrich the lives of their children. They don’t want to see it all turned into a subdivision. And that’s what they still want as the key role players in “Ties to the Land: Your Family Forest Heritage,” a range of materials developed at Oregon State University.

In this story of family conflict and diverse goals, everything comes together with a happy ending. As the storytellers point out in their conclusion, it’s not always that easy. But it’s a start.