It’s great to help your children but don’t risk your financial future or relationship with them.

Inviva has worked with risk experts to help people understand some of the risks of lending money to family.

The risk assessment questionnaire below is designed to guide you through the risks and implications when helping your child. The emphasis is on risks (bad things that could go wrong) rather than returns (great things that result when all goes well).

While some of these questions may be confronting, they could stop family heartbreak and financial catastrophes down the track.

A guideline for determining how much you can afford to help is to only lend what you can afford to lose!

This risk questionnaire consists of two parts:

• The non-financial area is checking that the relationship between you and your child is strong enough to weather any storms that may occur.
• Checking your financial capacity is able to withstand the catastrophic event that the child doesn’t make repayments.