How do you get your whole family, including siblings who will not live there, aligned and in writing before building a multi-generational ADU?

By Buz Artiano, BuildX | August 2026

Watch: What Happens When Mom Can't Live Alone Anymore: ADUs, Aging Parents, and Family Planning with Juli Ford

Most people come to us and they are really fixated on the details of the house itself. A lot of times they want a quick answer on the size, the layout, the timeline, and the price. But nobody wants to talk about the money and the inheritance. There's a lot of questions there, like who pays for what, who owns what, and what happens to the arrangement if a parent gets sick or passes away. Those conversations are hard to have and they're emotional, so naturally, families want to put them off and they assume an attorney will sort it all out later. But that's a huge reason that projects go wrong.

My name is Buz Artiano, founder of BuildX. We've built a lot of ADUs all over Massachusetts, but most of our projects have been on the South Shore and throughout Plymouth County. We handle all of the design, permitting, and construction ourselves in house, so we are the ones who walk families through every step, from zoning and septic questions to the final walkthrough. And the first thing we talk about with every family, before we do any drawings or permit applications, is not the building itself. It's whether the whole family is all on the same page about this project.

We say that because we've done a lot of these builds and they only stay on track if the family conversation is out of the way first. The construction is the part that we can control. But the family all being in agreement is what decides whether everyone is still glad they did this in three years. To help families get there, we work with specialists who do this kind of work full time, including Juli Ford of Home After 50, who has spent decades guiding families through living together with multiple generations. This article lays out exactly what you have to do, and in what order, so that when you talk to your first builder or attorney, everyone is already in agreement. Otherwise, you're just hoping that everything will work out and that attorneys can sort it out later, which gets very messy and very expensive because of one conversation you didn't have with your family.

What Do You Actually Have To Do Before You Build?

There are three things you have to do, and they have to go in this order. First, talk about money early, before anyone gets their heart set on a plan. Second, put everything in writing. Third, make sure everyone the decision affects is included in the conversation, including all siblings.

The order you do these in is as important as the steps themselves. Alignment comes first. The written agreement comes second. The legal paperwork comes last. Most people get this backwards. They get their heart set on a floor plan, they hire a builder, and the disagreement about money or ownership only shows its ugly head after the project is moving and it would be very expensive to stop everything. Get the agreement right first, and everything after that like the design, the financing, and the permits, gets easier. If you get this wrong, we can't go back and fix it for you.

Why Does the Money Conversation Have To Come First?

The money is the part everyone is thinking about, but nobody likes saying that out loud. In our experience, most families are really focused on the house itself, but they don't think about how they are going to live together on the same property, and what the official agreement will be. Juli Ford always tells families, "You should talk about money really, really early." Waiting absolutely will not make it easier. It just makes it come up at the worst time, which is usually after significant money has already been spent.

The money conversation has several questions that need to be answered. Like who contributes to the build, whether a parent is buying in or making monthly payments of some kind, who technically owns the building, who is going to pay for taxes and maintenance, and what happens to each person's portion of the project if there is a death or divorce. We get it, nobody wants to talk about this stuff, it's uncomfortable. But all of it is cheaper to settle now than to use lawyers to sort it out later. If you skip this conversation it can lead to a stalled project, problems with family relationships, or both.

Why Do Siblings Who Will Never Live There Belong at the Table?

All siblings need to be involved because a parent's money is involved, and that money would otherwise have been an inheritance. This is a big thing that doesn't occur to most families. It is not just the people involved with the property who have a stake in all of this. If a parent puts savings into a child's ADU and then passes away sooner than expected, whatever money they put into the ADU changes what every other child would have inherited. Ford learned this in her own family. When her mother moved in, they sat down with her brother, because if her mother had passed early, it would have changed what her brother was going to inherit. Her family talked it through and had a fairly easy time agreeing, but they still put it in writing.

Unfortunately we've watched failures play out when families don't do this. Two people shake hands on an arrangement, and they truly mean it. Then one of them gets sick or passes away, and the estate says it knows nothing about any deal they had made. Suddenly a sibling is staking claim to things the family already thought was settled, but there's no legal paperwork to support that. The siblings don't care about some hand shake arrangements from a barbecue several years ago. They care about what is in writing. We've held more than 400 client video meetings and 300 site visits, and the biggest thing that determines whether a build finished with no drama is not the design or the budget. It's whether the family put everything in writing or not, with all siblings included, before construction started. That's why we won't start drawings until there is a family agreement in writing. It protects you a lot more than it protects us.

Won't Our Estate Attorney Just Handle the Agreement?

People always assume that the estate attorney will just handle everything, even people who already have an estate attorney still get this wrong. They ask their attorney how the family should all get on the same page, but that's not what an estate attorney does. Their job is only to legalize an agreement that everyone has already come to. They aren't family counselors, they're not going to help everyone agree. If you walk in without already being in agreement, you're paying their hourly rate to sit through a negotiation that you should have had at home with your family first.

You have to do things in the correct order. First, the family gets in agreement, then they write down what they've agreed to. After that's done, attorneys just make it official and legal. When families ask us who should be part of the conversation, we usually tell them to start with an estate planner, specifically we recommend an elder-law attorney for aging-parent situations. Specialists like Juli Ford have special tools for the conversation that comes first, including a family-conversation guide with 98 prompts for the hardest questions and a separate guide that talks about the money and financing side. Use whichever one will help. Just make sure everyone agrees before calling in the attorneys.

When Is Building the Wrong First Move for a Family?

We build these units for a living, but that doesn't mean we tell every family that an ADU is the answer, because it's not. If your family can't sit down and have the money conversation honestly, or they refuse to put everything in writing, building the ADU first would absolutely be a mistake, and we make sure you know that before you spend a dollar. An ADU doesn't resolve a disagreement about money, ownership, or inheritance. It just creates disagreements about the property itself, which makes it a lot harder to walk away from. The families who should build are the ones who can all agree and document everything first. The families who can't do that yet are better off fixing the conversation before pouring a foundation. Sometimes the most useful thing we do at a first meeting is send a family back to have the talk they have been avoiding.

Start With the Conversation, Not the Blueprint

The decision you have to make first isn't which floor plan you want. It's whether your whole family, including the siblings who will never live there, is aligned and has it in writing before construction starts. If you do this right, the rest of the project is the easy part. Here is how to take the next step.