Household
The Harris household
Every other record — the Manual, the Decision Register, the Capital Allocation Policy, the Annual Review — operates under this one. It fixes what the wealth is for, who decides what, and the guardrails every decision is measured against. This is an illustrative sample for a fictional family.
A constitution is not a plan; it is the instrument a plan answers to. It changes rarely, by amendment, and only by the family's hand together with the adviser of record.
Financial decisions should not surprise one another.
Adopted verbatim as the family's first principle from The Driftwood Principles, and ratified below into the Articles that give it force.
Before a single allocation is made, the family states what the wealth is for. Every guardrail below exists to serve this sentence, and any decision that cannot be traced back to it is out of order.
This wealth exists to keep the family independent, educate the next generation, and outlast us.
Independence first: the household should never be forced into a decision — a sale, a withdrawal, a move — by a shortfall it could have foreseen. Education second: the next generation inherits not only capital but the framework for governing it. Endurance third: the structure is built to work across decades and successions, not to optimize any single year. Where these three pull against one another, they are weighed in that order.
A household is not a single decision-maker. This Article names the constituents the wealth is governed for, so that no decision is optimized for one at the silent expense of another.
The family is fictional and the constituents are illustrative. In a real Constitution this roster is explicit because decision rights (Art. III) and guardrails (Art. IV) mean nothing without naming whom they protect.
The heart of the instrument. For each domain, one line settles who decides, who must be consulted, and the guardrail the decision may not cross. Ambiguity about who decides is itself a risk; this charter removes it.
Who decides, who is consulted, and the guardrail each decision is measured against — by domain.
| Domain | Decision | Who decides | Who is consulted | The guardrail |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Investments | Rebalancing & allocation | Driftwood decides | Family consulted | No single position > 15% of liquid net worth |
| Estate | Gifting & transfers | Family decides | Estate attorney + Driftwood | No gift that impairs 24 months of liquidity |
| Residency | Domicile & large sales | Family decides | CPA + Driftwood | Sequenced before realization, never after |
| Tax | Annual Roth & harvest | Driftwood decides | Family consulted | No conversion year crossing an IRMAA cliff |
| Liquidity | Reserve floor | Driftwood decides | Family consulted | 90 days operating cash, untouched |
| Insurance | Coverage review | Family decides | Advisor + Driftwood | Coverage tracks the estate as it grows |
Illustrative thresholds for a fictional family. The point is not the specific numbers but that each decision has one owner, one required conversation, and one line it cannot cross quietly.
The standing limits that hold across every domain, independent of who is deciding. A guardrail is not a target to optimize toward; it is a boundary a decision may not cross without a formal amendment to this Constitution.
Where a guardrail and an opportunity conflict, the guardrail holds and the opportunity is logged to the Decision Register with the reason it was declined — so the record shows what was chosen against, not only what was chosen.
How this instrument governs the others, and how it changes. The Constitution is a versioned document: it is amended, never quietly rewritten, and every amendment is entered in the Change Log so the reasoning survives the revision.
Amend. 3 · Jul 2026 — ratified the Decision-Rights Charter of Art. III. Current.
Amend. 2 · May 2026 — added the sequencing rule when the Texas residency sequence opened; see the Decision Register.
Amend. 1 · Apr 2026 — fixed the guardrail thresholds. Illustrative history for a fictional family.
The Capital Allocation Policy — adopted under this instrument.
The Operating Manual — the book kept under it.
The Decision Register — decisions are measured against its guardrails.
The Annual Review — reads it against the year, every year.
A collection of products has no governing document; a system does. This instrument is what makes the family's wealth a system rather than a set of accounts that happen to be held by the same name — one framework the whole household, and every professional around it, decides against.