We use board structure changes brought by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX; 2002) and subsequent listing standards as a natural experiment to investigate if founding families are expropriators or stewards of shareholder value. We hypothesize gain in a firm's value post-SOX if founding families are expropriators and a value loss if they are stewards. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we find that family firms that did not meet the requirements of SOX-related, board independence provisions before 2002, suffered significant value loss post-SOX. Our results favor the steward role for founding families.