Citywealth Leaders List, 60 seconds interview – Patricia Annino, Rimon Law
This week’s 60 seconds Citywealth Leaders List interview features Patricia Annino, Partner, Rimon Law. With 30 years of experience in estate planning, Patricia helps families, individuals and family businesses navigate complex legal, tax and family matters to plan for the present and future. She is passionate about educating clients on the importance of flexible, ongoing estate planning that adapts to life’s inevitable changes and empowers them to make informed decisions.
Tell Citywealth readers a bit about your role.
I am a lawyer, family enterprise adviser and author. I am a partner in the Boston office of the global law firm, Rimon and a Senior Advisor and Associate Partner with Cambridge Family Enterprise Group, working with families around the world on ownership, succession, governance and inheritance.
I help families think through who will own, who will lead, who will make decisions and what each person will need to fulfil those responsibilities. My legal and advisory work gives me a close view of both the arrangements families create and what it takes to live with them. I am particularly interested in the consequences that become apparent over time: how a decision made with the best intentions in one generation will affect the choices available to the next.
What does a typical day look like for you?
My days move between client conversations, legal work, collaboration with other advisers, writing and preparation for speaking engagements. I enjoy the variety, particularly when a project takes me into unfamiliar territory.
For a recent presentation at the Family Firm Institute conference at the Marriott Marquis in New York, I spent seven months developing three avatars: a family business adviser, a mediator and a general counsel. The scenario featured a brother and sister competing to become CEO of their family business. They questioned each adviser/avatar who responded from their respective professional perspectives. Then the adviser/avatars questioned one another.
It was an engaging way to explore a familiar succession dilemma, and the presentation was very well received. Preparing for that certainly brought something different to my working day.
Tell us about some recent, interesting client instructions/requests you have received.
Recent work has included helping families launch family councils, reconsider shared ownership arrangements and develop philanthropy that gives children and grandchildren meaningful opportunities to work together. Shared ownership raises particularly interesting questions. An inheritance can make siblings business partners for decades. Before recommending that arrangement, I want the family to consider whether the partnership suits their different needs, ambitions and willingness to make decisions together. One useful question is: would the children choose to own this asset together if they were making the decision themselves? The answer helps us examine what continuing together would require, including how decisions will be made, how disagreements will be addressed and whether someone can eventually leave.
What challenges do your clients face and how are you helping your clients to overcome them?
I often see a gap between what a family expects of someone and the authority, information or preparation that person has been given. A member of the next generation may be expected to lead while the important decisions continue to be made elsewhere.
I help families make those expectations explicit and work through what each role actually requires. Responsibility needs to be accompanied by the ability to exercise judgment. There are also concerns people find difficult to voice: fear of disappointing a parent, losing control, not being good enough or admitting that they want a different life. I listen carefully for those concerns and help bring them into the discussion. They can have a profound effect on whether a plan will work.
Are there any top of mind themes for you or your clients?
A major focus is my work on inheritance system design. Families inherit assets and structures, along with expectations, relationships, patterns of authority and stories about who they are. Each generation has to decide what to do with that inheritance. What should be preserved? What needs recalibration? What should be fundamentally transformed? People, enterprises and legal arrangements change at different speeds. A structure can outlast the assumptions on which it was built. I am interested in helping families recognise when that has happened and make thoughtful choices about what comes next.
I am also taking a course in cultural anthropology to deepen my understanding of how families function. Working across cultures makes it especially important to examine assumptions about authority, obligation, independence and belonging.
What is your proudest professional achievement?
Receiving the Family Firm Institute’s Richard Beckhard Practice Award in 2022 was a particular honor. Recognition from colleagues whose work I respect meant a great deal to me. I am also proud of the confidence families place in me at consequential moments in their lives. They are making decisions about their children, their life’s work and a future they will not entirely control. Being invited into those conversations is a responsibility I take seriously. Helping people reach decisions they understand and can stand behind is deeply satisfying.
What do you consider to be the most important attributes for a leader?
Judgment, integrity and the courage to hear something uncomfortable. You can learn a great deal about a leader from how they respond to disagreement. People need to feel able to bring forward a concern, challenge an assumption or deliver unwelcome information.
I also value generosity: sharing credit, developing others and giving capable people meaningful authority. In a family enterprise, a leader may have held a role for so long that it has become part of their identity. Knowing when to change that role is an important leadership skill. Preparing someone to succeed you includes giving them room to develop their own judgment.
Who do you most admire and why?
Nan-b de Gaspé Beaubien. I admire the way she has used her intelligence, influence and experience to make a substantial contribution to family enterprise and philanthropy, including supporting women in enterprising families.
What also appeals to me is the breadth of her life: the partnership she built with her husband, Philippe, her intellectual independence and her continuing appetite for learning. She has accomplished a great deal and remains interested in new ideas and possibilities. I admire that combination of conviction and openness.
Where was the last place you travelled to for work or pleasure?
London, where I went for work and also worked in pleasure. I saw Christine Baranski in Hay Feverl Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera House and a lecture on the Hidden Churches of England held at St. Margaret’s Church in Westminster. Having both theatre, opera and history in the same visit was a pleasure. That is my idea of a very good trip.
If you weren’t in this industry, what else might you be doing?
I would probably spend more of my time writing and exploring history. I have already written six books including most recently a history of the Italian immigration to Boston’s North End. I am fascinated by the lives behind a place or an event: what people hoped for, the choices they faced and how they responded to their circumstances. Writing lets me follow those questions wherever they lead. There are many more stories I would like to explore.
How do you relax after a long day?
I like becoming absorbed in something outside the day’s work. I recently took a Christie’s course on European art, and I am taking classes on voice at Harvard.
I am a life long learner. There is pleasure in concentrating on something new and discovering how much there is to learn. Reading, ballet, theatre and opera are also important parts of my life.
Key Takeaways
- Patricia Annino, a partner at Rimon Law, has 30 years of experience in estate planning, helping families navigate legal and tax issues.
- She emphasizes the importance of flexible estate planning that adapts to changing circumstances and empowers clients to make informed decisions.
- Her recent projects include launching family councils and addressing shared ownership challenges among siblings.
- Patricia values judgment, integrity, and the courage to address uncomfortable issues as key leadership attributes.
- She admires Nan-b de Gaspé Beaubien for her contributions to family enterprise and her lifelong pursuit of learning.
Patricia Annino‘s Citywealth Leaders List profile
Rimon Law‘s Citywealth Leaders List profile
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