How to spread the wealth
The [Marshall] Field chronicles tell us that it is not taxes or mismanagement that erode family fortunes, but multiple marriages. While it is often difficult for siblings to amicably take over the running of a huge enterprise, the situation becomes more challenging when divorce introduces half-brothers and stepsisters. Marshall Field’s 22,000-word will was an extraordinary document, the longest ever probated in Chicago. He left the bulk of his fortune to his two underage grandsons, but stipulated that most of the money be kept in trust until they turned fifty…
What Marshall Field did not foresee was his male offspring’s high turnover of wives. Of the six generations bearing the name Marshall Field, only Marshall II and, as of the present, Marshall VI (married in 1992) had one wife. Marshall Field III and IV each had three wives; Marshall Field V married twice and his half-brother Ted three times. The founding father’s will that for sixty-five years carried the fortune forward collapsed in 1982 when Ted demanded his share of the Field Enterprises.
From the recent book The Marshall Fields, by Axel Madsen.