A Family Office Is An Important Part Of Sustaining Family Values

I am often asked by new clients, “why do I need a family office?” After all, most people already have existing relationships with banks, portfolio managers, investment advisors, insurance agents, lawyers, realtors, accountants, etc. These professionals, firms, and institutions usually have an established long-term relationship with various family members. So why even consider a family office? 

The simplest reason is that a family office is your own private vehicle designed to represent your family’s desires and needs based upon your values. Whether your family office is structured as a single-family office or a shared multi-family office is really just a personal preference based on your family’s needs and finances. 

Your family office should always aggregate, and work on your behalf, with your existing relationships first. Your family office should also be able to facilitatenew introductions to other professionals, product issuers, and other service providers, to help you meet your objectives if certain skills, products, processes, or services are lacking from your existing relationships. 

If we use a sport’s team analogy, you and your family are the sole owners of your sport’s team, or, in other words, your own lives. You set the mission, vision, and purpose of your team. Your family office is your General Manager, whose sole purpose is to help you build your championship team to achieve your vision and goals. Retaining and overseeing the actual coaches and players is just another way of saying that your Family Office will help you bring together the right people and put them into the right seats to help you achieve your goals. Obviously, as you are not starting from scratch in your life, some of your coaches and players will be existing relationships. The rest of your team will need to be drafted by your family office so that you can build a championship team to make your dreams come true. 

One of the main roles of your family office is to assess the timeframes for achieving your objectives. For example, a short-term goal may be successfully met by simply using existing team members or bringing on board a new player(s). This is no different than using a current star player on a sport’s team or drafting a supporting star player to a sport’s team to win the championship ring. 

However, when dealing with legacy planning or intergenerational planning, whichoften requires a long term need for ongoing services, it is more important for your family office to work with, or bring on board, firms or institutions with great track records, which will be around long after your immediate family has passed away. 

Your family office is your private, confidential, fiduciary, and central hub to empower your family to transform its current wealth, or existing family business, into a family enterprise which will successfully survive for a minimum of seven generations. This will require your family to transition from simply blood relationships to a family of affinity, which will include like-minded family members and an outside eco-system that will support the family on its journey.

In the end, a true legacy family will need to move from simply focusing on success to creating a long term, sustainable family governance system which will transform the family into a dynastic family of significance. 

I know of no better option in the world today to support a family dynasty than having your own private and confidential family office, whose sole purpose is to do what is best for you and your family.