Read this short piece on “The “Why” of a Family Office“, as published in Impact! online magazine on May 2, 2024, also a short video clip.

The “Why” of a Family Office

Last updated: July 8, 2026

The notion of Legacy in a family is the most critical “Why” for families setting up a family office. Why is your family establishing a family office, and what is the legacy of your family that your family office will support?

Reflect on these questions:

· What is your family legacy?

· What is your family story?

· What does it mean to be a member of your family?

· What does your family stand for, both internally to incoming members of the family, whether by marriage or by birth and rising generation, or to the outside world, especially if you’re a family that has a known presence?

· What do you want your family members to think of as your family identity?

· What do you want the world to know about you as a family, to think of as your family identity?

I like to approach this subject by helping the family craft their family story in a mindful, considered way, rather than simply allowing it to evolve haphazardly over time. The ability to tell a consistent family story that reflects the family’s values, culture and legacy in a clear, cogent and repeatable fashion is a gift to the future generations of your family. Engaging in a values exercise is a critical piece, for the family to examine, identify and perpetuate its core values.

In thinking about the “Why” of establishing your family office, it is much more than just estate planning and gifting, investment roll-up reporting, and tax planning.

At its best, establishing a family office is all about setting the stage and establishing a framework for the rising generation and the generations that hopefully come after them to be competent and confident stewards of their wealth.

Please read this short piece discussing What is a Family Office?, as published in Point of View online magazine on April 3, 2024, also a brief video clip.

What is a Family Office?

Last updated: July 8, 2026

“What is a family office” is a very interesting question. There is a great deal of confusion and disagreement about the term. In the past 20 years, there has been a proliferation of RIA’s and wealth management firms calling themselves family offices because it’s the new “it” label, and it may be seen as a way to attract new investors.

There are two main types of family offices, the Single-Family Office (SFO) and the Multi-Family Office (MFO).

SFO’s manage the finances and other matters for a single family. They often have a team of dedicated staff on the payroll, possibly including investment, tax, philanthropy, accounting, legal, estate planning and governance personnel. They may also outsource certain of these functions to external service providers. My general rule of thumb is that, because of the high costs associated with operating an SFO, a family should not consider creating one if its assets are less than $500 million. Of course, every general rule has exceptions, and a family may have particular reasons to establish an SFO at lower asset levels, especially if the family’s investments are primarily in real estate or other specialized industries. There are many families that have just one employee who is responsible for only the family’s investing, and one can argue whether that is a true family office or not; it depends upon your point of view.

An MFO provides those services to more than one family. The term originated when, for economies of scale, wealthy families formed into small groups who were similarly minded, similarly situated, and had complementary needs. They were able to scale their resources, scale their expenses, and coinvest in private deal flow. They could bring on a CIO and compensate them in such a way as to keep them engaged. They could also hire staff to perform other concierge-type services, including tax work, investment roll-up reporting, and the true concierge services, such as travel, household staff management, and governance.

MFO’s can be comprised of a small group of families or, more recently, they might actually be a large wealth management firm offering a basket of family wealth services, either for a bundled investment management fee or billed a la carte.

There has been a huge proliferation of late in true family offices and also firms that call themselves family offices. Depending on your point of view, maybe they are in fact family offices or maybe they’re not, but if you’re here and you’re talking about these issues, then welcome under the tent.

I am thrilled and honored to be the GOLD WINNER of the Entrepreneurial Woman of the Year at the 2024 Citywealth Powerwomen Awards USA! The award ceremony was on March 14, 2024. Thanks to Citywealth for championing women in the wealth sector, and congratulations to all the talented and amazing professionals who were recognized.

Click to read this short thought piece on the Biggest Mistake in Setting Up Family Offices, as published in Talking Trends online magazine on March 4, 2024.
You can also watch this brief video clip.

The Biggest Mistake in Setting Up Family Offices

Last updated: July 8, 2026

One of the biggest mistakes that people make in setting up a family office is the failure to think about the future and to build-in adaptability and flexibility into their structure.

If the wealth creators have set up their family office simply to run their own assets, and they’re not necessarily thinking about or incorporating and engaging the next generation’s needs and values into that family office, then it’s destined to fail.

If the family is setting up their family office and isn’t thinking about leadership succession planning from Day One, then it’s destined to fail.

These families are unique; they evolve and grow. They grow through marriage, they grow through the rising generation becoming adults, and evolve as those rising adults develop their own interests, needs and values.

The advisors and the family itself need to be nimble in designing the services and structure of the family office, and to build-in the flexibility to make changes as the family grows and as the family’s needs and interests continue to evolve. So if G1 wants to establish a single family office to simply address their own cash flow, investment reporting, and other purely financial needs, but G2 wants to engage with the family office differently, maybe they want to engage in governance practices, or create a family foundation, or do impact investing, the family office has to adapt to those evolving family needs or else risks becoming irrelevant.

I worked with a family recently, where G2 was very interested in impact investing but G1, who controlled the purse strings, had no interest in it whatsoever and actively resisted that direction. That family office is destined to eventually fail unless the two generations find a way to talk to each other about this potential change in direction, and build in the adaptability and flexibility for the family office to meet the interests, needs and concerns of all the stakeholders and not just the wealth creator generation.

Please read this short piece discussing the right age to start teaching the next gen about wealth, as published in Inspiration and Insights online magazine on February 7, 2024, also a brief video clip.

The Right Age to Start Teaching Next Gen About Wealth

Last updated: July 8, 2026

The right age to start teaching the next generation about wealth was yesterday. You can’t start yesterday, so start today!

It’s the age-old questions of how much do we give our kids, and when? And how much do we tell our kids about our family’s wealth, and when? Those two questions are the ones that, in my experience, do keep parents of wealth up at night.

There are age-appropriate ways to start shaping attitudes about wealth and money in even young children. One way is as simple as deciding whether to give children an allowance.

My 3 rules of thumb with allowances are, first, be consistent. If you decide to give an allowance, it can’t just be when you remember it, but it must be on a regular schedule.

Second, my philosophy is that an allowance should not be a reward for doing chores; I think that chores are part of one’s responsibility as a member of the family, and a child doesn’t do them because they get paid at the end, they do them because, for example, one person runs the family foundation, and one person maybe does the food shopping and one person maybe takes out the garbage or whatever. And every family member must do their chores as well. I believe that not linking the chores to the allowance is critical to building a sense of family responsibility.

Third, the main benefit of allowances is helping to teach the next generation to distinguish between wants and needs. I’m sure many of you know the three-jar concept of allowances: the Spend jar, the Give jar, and the Save jar. The parents encourage their kids to divide their allowance among the three jars. The nature of delayed gratification in the Save jar is, maybe I don’t have enough to buy that video game or that app today, but if I save up my allowance for a couple of weeks, I’ll be able to do it. With the Give jar, the idea there is to make it a clear jar, so that the children can see that clear jar growing, if that’s part of your family value system. And then you can choose to match what your child puts in, so they can see that Give jar growing exponentially. That technique is one that works particularly well with even little kids, because it is so visual.

With teenagers, one way to start teaching them about the family’s wealth is to invite them into the family office either as an after-school job or a summer job, and help encourage them to learn more about the family story, the family history, the family work ethic, the family culture, and to learn about the family office.

So those are some age-appropriate ways to get more children involved and engaged at different ages, and teaching them the family’s story and culture.

Wealth Legacy Advisors LLC, nationally recognized thought-partner to UHNW families and their trusted advisors, today announced that it has been designated a finalist in 4 separate categories at The 11th Annual Family Wealth Report Awards.

We are honored to have been included in the list of finalists in these categories:

-FAMILY WEALTH COUNSELLING
-LEADING INDIVIDUAL
-OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO WEALTH MANAGEMENT THOUGHT LEADERSHIP (INDIVIDUAL)
-WOMEN IN WEALTH FAMILY OFFICE (INDIVIDUAL)

Winners will be announced at a gala on May 2, 2024. The Family Wealth Report Awards recognize expert services for private family wealth firms. The awards reward achievement and showcase best-in-class providers.  Read the Press Release HERE.

Click to read this short piece discussing Helping The Next Gen Find Their Own Identity, as published in Impact! online magazine on January 10, 2024, also a brief video clip.

Helping The Next Gen Find Their Own Identity

Last updated: July 8, 2026

In thinking about helping the next generation find their own identity, I recall a family meeting that I facilitated a number of years ago. The wealth creator and his wife had three high-school age children. The parents called for a family meeting because they had the foresight to recognize that their children were different than they were. The children were not financially-minded people, they were artists: one child was a filmmaker, another was a fine artist, and the third was a musician.

As the kids began their college research process, the parents wanted them to know that they had the freedom and flexibility to pursue their passions, and that their parents would not force them into the family business. They wanted their children to understand that as long as the children were doing something productive with their lives and making the world a better place, the parents’ estate plan would support that.

This was years ago and I still remember the story, because the empowerment that these youngsters felt in knowing that they could pursue their passion with freedom and a safety net, that they didn’t have to become captains of industry in order to inherit their parents’ wealth, was a powerful lesson to me. It is one that I share with you because parents of wealth often struggle with how to get their kids to find their own path in life.

The flip side of that is the sense of guilt in the younger generations that they didn’t do anything to inherit the wealth and may feel uncomfortable with it. I don’t generally see that with the G2’s who grew up sitting at the kitchen table and hearing the wealth creator’s stories, but it is not unheard of for G3’s or G4’s to have inheritor’s guilt: “I didn’t do anything to deserve this wealth, I’m just going to give it all away.”

It all comes back to the family stories, the family values, and crafting that intentionally, so that those stories can be shared with younger generations to reinforce the family’s values and culture. The message is not simply, “here’s your inheritance, do with it what you will,” but rather “we have a legacy of philanthropy in this family, and we support these kinds of causes.”

I’m working with a family now with a significant family foundation that was just funded because unfortunately, the patriarch just passed away. In the past, the foundation historically gave to very specific local causes supported by the patriarch, but his descendants don’t live in that geographic community. What we’re trying to do with that family is broaden the lens of the foundation; as long as the descendants are making the world a better place then they’re satisfying the founder’s mission.