When Jamie Johnson documented the angst of his peers in his documentary Born Rich (see “Teach Your Children Well,” July 2004, page 44), the fourth-generation heir to the Johnson & Johnson health care fortune provided a keen insight into his generation’s dilemma. “I was always told that the American dream is about getting a bigger and better life than your parents have,” he said in the voice-over. “But that dream was accomplished by my great-grandfather.”

The fourth generation often pays a price for its birthright. The world judges it hastily, as comprised of either soft, spoiled royals born with silver spoons that mute their talents and ambitions, or noblesse oblige-ridden bluebloods who will leap at the chance to write a charitable check. Meanwhile, the family fortune is divided among ever-larger numbers of cousins, many of whom barely know one another.

Even so, fourth-generation success stories can be found in all walks of life. Having bypassed the up-by-the-bootstraps model, they are free to pursue other paths. Many fourth-generation individuals become entrepreneurs, and pit themselves in an arena where, even with family capital and connections, they must still prove their mettle as capitalists. This appeals to those who are unimpressed by the prospect of a post at the family business, where the public, colleagues and shareholders often greet the achievements of family members skeptically.

Those who do decide to rise through the ranks of the family business face significant challenges. If it falls to the third generation to prove that the family’s legacy can transform a business into an efficient, value-creating operation, then it falls to the fourth and its successors to rip it up again, discard the inoperative or arcane parts and expand upon the best ones. Family CEOs must reinvent the family business to keep up with changing markets and technologies, without destroying it. The hard decisions that must be made along the way often spark enervating family quarrels, which may become fodder in the business news.

This past summer, members of the traditionally publicity-shy Molson family found themselves in the headlines as they formed two feuding factions. One side stood behind Eric Molson, the sixth-generation chairman of the 219-year-old Canadian brewery and an advocate of a merger with the company owned by the Coors family. The other side supported Eric’s cousin, Ian Molson, and his efforts to prevent the merger. Meanwhile, if the merger succeeds [it was still pending as Worth went to press], Peter Coors, the fourth generation chairman of his family’s empire, failed candidate for a 2004 U.S. Senate seat and last family member to be actively involved in day-to-day management, would step aside from his great-grandfather Adolph’s fiercely outspoken family business.

The great-grandchildren who successfully keep a business in the family’s control often share at least one emotion in common: a reverence for their great-grandfather’s stamp upon the firm. They may not agree with his earlier patriarchal policies—corporate or parental. (Adolf Coors Jr., a member of the second Coors generation, is reported to have scheduled routine Sunday spankings for the children.) They also may find themselves heirs to an obsolete business model in need of substantial overhaul. But they often find the energy and will to tackle those issues vital to their sense of legacy. For one Texas dynasty (see “Deep in the Heart,” page 68), that meant preserving land originally used for ranching, then tapped for oil, rather than selling it in parcels to developers. They are taking a short-term loss by not exploiting the land’s burgeoning value, but they are eager to pass it intact to the next generation.

Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours was a French physiocrat who fled the revolutionary terror forAmerica in 1800, but his inspiring tale was not enough to forestall conflict within the later DuPont empire.

This sense of legacy often dissipates in the century that elapses between the reign of the patriarch and the fourth generation. These individuals are likely to know the dynasty founder glaring out of old photographs only slightly better than the general public does. Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours was a French Physiocrat who fled the revolutionary terror for America in 1800, but his inspiring tale was not enough to forestall conflict within the later DuPont empire. Leslie Mayer, a psychologist who works with intergenerational families through the Wharton Global Family Alliance at the University of Pennsylvania, observes that family business heirs from the fourth generation and beyond must “reinvent the family narrative” if they wish to maintain the family’s cohesion. They can reexamine old stories and package them for their own heirs, sometimes, says Mayer, “with a more palatable story than the old one.”