The weight of the land

By Hayley Leatherwood September 2026

For farm families, inheritance starts long before ownership. Each generation learns to care for the land and wonders who will carry it forward.

Long before a family talks about wills, trusts or deeds, the next generation has already begun inheriting the farm.

A child learns to shut a gate before they’re tall enough to reach the latch. They ride on the tractor fender because there isn’t room in the cab. Around the dinner table, they hear stories about drought, hard winters and grandparents they never met until those memories become part of their own.

For many farm families, responsibility comes long before ownership.

That truth plays out on thousands of Oklahoma farms served by electric cooperatives. The crops and livestock may differ, but sooner or later nearly every family faces the same question:

“Who will care for this place when I’m gone?”

Deciding before dividing

For Oklahoma Electric Cooperative member Jona Kay Squires, the answer came one decision at a time.

Her father wanted the farm to outlive him.

“He bought 200 acres near Lexington in the early 2000s,” Squires said. “He wanted to show the grandkids how to hang on to it for the next generation.”

Today, Squires and her husband help carry out that vision while caring for her mother, who is nearing 80. Her brother remains involved in the family’s operation, though agriculture is not his full-time career as it is hers.

Like many farm families, they are balancing different expectations, careers and financial realities while trying to preserve their loved one’s wishes.

Steve Davis spent more than 40 years helping Oklahoma families navigate those decisions.

As a Cimarron Electric Cooperative member who grew up in agriculture, Davis understands that succession planning involves far more than legal documents.

“Farm and ranch operations are different. It’s partly emotional. It’s partly the legacy of the agricultural West,” Davis said. “Families tend to have a greater connection to the land, to what the land means and what the rural way of life means than some other types of family businesses.”

That emotional connection often shapes how each generation views the future.

The son or daughter who stayed may have accepted long hours, financial uncertainty and hard work. A sibling who built a career somewhere else may still feel deeply connected to the farm because it shaped their childhood.

Neither perspective is wrong, Davis said. Problems begin when families assume everyone shares the same expectations.

“The misconception,” Davis said, “is that everybody knows what the senior generation is thinking.”

“If you don’t communicate it, no one will know.”

Squires understands that lesson firsthand.

After her father’s death, there was work to do and a future he had hoped his family would protect. If communication is the foundation of succession planning, fairness is often the hardest conversation.

“It’s a challenge because family dynamics are involved,” Davis said. “Eventually you get to a point where there are on-farm and off-farm heirs.”

Sometimes those sacrifices are easy to see. Others accumulate over decades.

A spouse works an off-farm job to provide health insurance. Parents delay retirement because the business cannot yet support another generation. Grandparents continue keeping the books well into their seventies because no one else knows where every receipt belongs.

Those realities shape nearly every succession plan.

Some families believe equal love should mean equal ownership. Others believe the child who devoted years to the operation should receive a larger share.

“There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution,” Davis said.

There is the potential some operations generate enough income to support multiple households while others barely sustain one. Some include businesses beyond production agriculture that provide additional income. Others depend almost entirely on the land itself.

“It is hard to generate a high yield on assets given how much farm real estate is worth now,” Davis said.

For many Oklahoma families, land values have risen much faster than farm income. On paper, the operation may be worth a large sum, but it may not generate enough income to buy out multiple heirs and keep the farm intact.

That’s why Davis encourages families to start by deciding what they want the future of the farm to look like before they begin dividing assets.

Should it continue operating?

Should it stay in the family?

Or is preserving family relationships more important than preserving the farm itself?

Having the tough conversations

When families avoid those conversations, the consequences often don’t appear until after a death, when legal documents become more than instructions.

“They can become perceived proof of how a parent valued each child,” Davis said. “Everyone processes information through his or her own filter.”

Squires is thankful her family started talking before those decisions became urgent.

She remembers encouraging her parents to attend meetings where attorneys explained succession planning. Her father already had a clear vision for the future.

He wanted the farm to remain with the next generation.

After he died, that vision became a responsibility.

“My mom told me, ‘I’ll keep the farm, but you’ve got to help me,’” Squires said.

Her parents spent their careers teaching agriculture and family sciences, believing knowledge should be shared. Squires has continued that tradition.

Today, she welcomes teachers, students and producers to the family farm. Visitors see everything from calf tagging to artificial insemination while local producers help explain how food moves from pasture to plate.

“I have to lean into my purpose,” she said. “I have always wanted my kids to learn a work ethic.”

For Davis, those conversations should begin well before anyone schedules an appointment with an attorney.

Too often, he said, families think succession planning starts and ends with preparing legal documents.

“It doesn’t matter what we put in documents,” Davis said with a laugh. “We can’t perform personality transplants.”

The line likely gets a laugh, but his point is serious.

A will cannot repair years of misunderstanding. A trust cannot create trust between siblings. Legal documents transfer ownership, but they cannot replace conversations that never happened.

Instead, Davis encourages families to start around the kitchen table.

Who wants to continue farming? What does fairness look like for your family? How will aging parents be cared for? If one child plans to take over the operation, how will that affect everyone else?

Those conversations may change over time.

“A succession plan isn’t something you do once and forget,” Davis said. “It has to evolve as the family changes.”

Planning also isn’t only about what happens after someone dies.

Illness, injury or declining health can force difficult decisions long before an estate is settled.

If someone can no longer manage the operation, who has the authority to pay bills, sign contracts or make financial decisions? What happens if a parent develops dementia or gradually loses the ability to oversee the business they spent decades building?

Waiting until a crisis leaves families making major decisions while they’re also trying to care for someone they love.

Those situations are difficult enough without uncertainty about who should be making them.

One lesson surprised Squires as her own family worked through the process.

A date-of-death appraisal can make a significant difference.

The appraisal establishes the property’s value when someone dies, creating a record that can affect how the estate is settled and how the property is treated for future tax purposes.

“It values everything,” Squires said.

It’s a step many families don’t realize is important until they need it.

That is one reason Davis encourages families to assemble a team of trusted advisers before major decisions must be made.

An attorney can ensure legal documents reflect a family’s wishes. A tax professional can explain how different strategies affect the operation. A financial adviser can help connect today’s decisions with long-term goals.

Just as important, Davis said, those advisers should understand agriculture.

Putting the people first

Every farm comes with its own set of challenges.

A wheat operation faces different decisions than a cow-calf ranch. One family may own mineral interests or renewable energy leases. Another depends entirely on livestock. Some have children eager to come home. Others have children whose lives and careers have taken them in another direction.

“There is no template that fits every family,” Davis said.

That answer isn’t always the one people want to hear.

Families often hope there’s a formula that guarantees fairness and preserves both the operation and family relationships. Davis has spent enough years working with farm families to know it rarely works that way.

Instead, he encourages families to build a plan around their own priorities.

For some, the goal is keeping the farm together for another generation. For others, it’s making sure aging parents are cared for. Sometimes preserving family relationships becomes more important than preserving every acre.

The right plan is the one that reflects those priorities and gives everyone the opportunity to understand not only what decisions were made, but why.

When Davis reflects on the succession plans that have worked best, he rarely talks about legal documents.

He remembers the families.

“The people and the relationships are a lot more important than money or assets,” he said.

The legal work still matters.

Wills, trusts and tax strategies provide structure during some of life’s most difficult moments. They can reduce uncertainty, protect a family business and help carry out a person’s wishes.

But they work best when the conversations have already taken place.

No succession plan guarantees every family member will agree with every decision. Honest communication cannot erase disappointment or eliminate conflict.

It can, however, replace assumptions with understanding.

For Squires, that’s what her father gave his family.

His vision wasn’t simply to pass along 200 acres. He wanted future generations to understand why the land mattered and to care for it long after he was gone.

Today, that commitment shapes the way Squires raises her own children and welcomes others onto the farm. Every school group that visits, every teacher who learns alongside producers and every child who sees where food comes from continues something her parents started years ago.

The work of passing down a farm doesn’t begin with an attorney’s office, and it doesn’t end when a deed changes hands.

It happens over years of shared work, hard conversations and decisions made with the next generation in mind.

The paperwork may mark the transfer of ownership.

The real inheritance is the purpose that comes with it.