Ali Katz

Inside our house, money moved like a weather system—charged, unpredictable, intangible—but never grounded in open discussion. After all, my father had everything under control. Brilliant, charming, and quick, my dad could make thin air feel like a bank vault.

When I was in fifth grade, he went to jail for selling fraudulent oil leases to retirees. Everything was wiped out—for the people he’d conned, including my mother, my sister, and me.

I scrapped my way through high school, college, and law school and came to understand something uncomfortable: I was my father’s daughter. The sharp mind. The persuasive instinct. What I did not want to inherit was the illusion of value.

After graduating first in my class from Georgetown Law, I joined the estate planning department at one of the most prestigious firms in the country. It seemed like the invulnerable perch from which I would protect families from the kind of havoc that had wrecked mine.

The estate plans were immaculate—precise language in thick binders with the gravitas of vault doors. But behind them was disorder. Assets were scattered across accounts, advisors, and assumptions.

That’s when I realized: The system wasn’t malfunctioning. It was functioning exactly as designed.