Another Family Business Fortune Destroyed

Quite often someone builds a successful business and it becomes a family business. At least some of the children are active in the business, and all or most of them have ownership interests. But such businesses often don’t make the transition to established, functioning institutions, and that’s because the founder or latest patriarch doesn’t properly plan. A good example is the family behind the Orkin pest control and related businesses, as reported by Forbes. It’s a good estate planning lesson for families with estates of any size.

Glen has sued his father, Gary, CEO of Rollins Inc., as well as his uncle Randall, company chairman. Glen’s three siblings also joined in, claiming they were being denied their rightful cash allocations–though Randall’s five kids stuck by their dad and Gary. Ruthie apparently took her kids’ side in the money fight, filing for divorce from Gary, after 45 years, at almost precisely the same time. And then Glen and Danielle began their own ugly divorce. The cumulative effect–father vs. sons, wives vs. husbands, cousins vs. cousins–makes this one of the nastiest intergenerational battles ever to take place among members of The Forbes 400 (Gary and Randall rank 225th on the list, at $2.7 billion each). “It’s like a Greek tragedy,” says Danielle.

The feud, playing out over the past four years, may finally reach a denouement: The trial in the core case, which will decide whether the older generation is stingy in its handouts or the heirs are greedy ingrates, is expected to start next year.

But spend a few months under the hood and it’s clear that the larger verdict is already in: A lifetime’s work, and a family legacy, was destroyed by shoddy estate planning and questionable parenting. “It’s needless,” says Glen. “There’s plenty of assets. It has to do with extreme and destructive efforts by my father and uncle to control. No one disputes those assets are ours.”