Speaker on “Family Governance and The Family Office: Planning for the Next Generation” at the Opal Family Office Forum in beautiful Newport, RI on July 10-12, 2023.
Susan
I was interviewed in the 2023 Acclaim magazine, which recognizes leaders across the global wealth management industry.
Read it HERE.
On July 1, 2023, we celebrated a major milestone – 10 years since Wealth Legacy Advisors was founded!
I couldn’t be more proud of, and more grateful for, the trust and confidence that my clients have placed in me these 10 years, and I look forward to continuing to serve you for many more years to come.
What keeps you up at night? Ten years ago I had a big idea – that what keeps families of wealth up at night is not their investments, taxes or estate plans, but rather raising their families in an atmosphere of wealth to become competent and confident stewards of their wealth.
Read more HERE, as published on June 2, 2023 in Inspiration and Insights online magazine.
Celebrating 10 Years!
Last updated: July 8, 2026
On July 1, 2023, we will celebrate a major milestone — 10 years since Wealth Legacy Advisors was founded!
I couldn’t be more proud of, and more grateful for, the trust and confidence that my clients have placed in me these 10 years, and I look forward to continuing to serve you for many more years to come.
What keeps you up at night? Ten years ago I had a big idea — that what keeps families of wealth up at night is not their investments, taxes or estate plans, but rather raising their families in an atmosphere of wealth to become competent and confident stewards of their wealth.
What is in a name? Our name Wealth Legacy Advisors was chosen carefully to convey that we advise on the legacy of wealth, not the financial or investment management of that wealth. We are thought partners to UHNW families about the human issues of wealth: their legacy, stewardship and governance. We do not provide any investment advice, legal advice or tax advice, and do not sell insurance or any other product.
The families who have invited me into their worlds these past 10 years are each fascinatingly unique but, upon reflection, do tend to fall into two distinct patterns. First are the families experiencing some pressing business transaction or transition, perhaps in an operating family business or in the “business of the family” — the family’s ongoing investments, or even the family’s philanthropic vehicle.
These families brought me into their system because they trusted that my deep background in law and business advising UHNW families for my entire career would enable me to understand — and not inadvertently disturb — the complex and technical planning, agreements and transactions already in place.
Second are the families NOT experiencing an immediate business crisis, who want to get ahead of the curve by engaging in governance planning to set up the next generation for success, and creating structures for better communication and decision-making before the inevitable issues arise.
I’ve been engaged by family offices and by trustees of family trusts to foster responsibility and common bonds among beneficiaries, and by parents and grandparents to facilitate family meetings and engage in mission, vision and values exercises which might result in family constitutions and the like.
With my People-First approach, I helped UHNW families like yours navigate the complex issues at hand, while acknowledging that the true source of tension may well be at the intersection of financial matters with the family dynamics iceberg lying deeper below the surface.
I am passionate about the work that I do with families of wealth. The so-called “soft issues” of wealth are the hardest of all, and I look forward to my next 10 years of guiding families through the land mines … and having fun while doing so!
I am honored to be featured in the Family Wealth Report in a new article that I co-authored with Carol R. Kaufman: How to Retain Clients During The Great Wealth Transfer, published on May 17, 2023. You can read it HERE, or read a short piece about it published in Talking Trends online magazine on July 10, 2023 HERE.
How to Retain Clients During The Great Wealth Transfer
Last updated: July 8, 2026
The largest generational wealth transfer in US history has already begun.
Most research shows that fewer than 20% of adult children of affluent clients will remain with their parents’ financial advisor after inheriting their parents’ wealth, because they have very different expectations of how they want advisory services delivered to them.
Trusted advisors to HNW baby boomers, such as financial advisors, wealth managers, and estate planning attorneys, recognize that retaining the next generation of clients is critical for the long-term success of their business. The issue is how to best accomplish this.
The most important pain points for trusted advisors to consider in retaining next-gen offspring as clients aren’t investment matters. Rather, they’re the “soft” or human issues, including values, communication and demographic diversity, which actually turn out to be the “hardest” obstacles to navigate.
Read the full article HERE to learn how to better understand these pain points and develop strategies to address them, in order for you to build strong relationships with the younger generations of your clients, securing the long-term success of your business.
I couldn’t be more delighted to announce that on May 4, 2023, I won the Family Wealth Report Award for Outstanding Contribution to Wealth Management Thought Leadership (Individual)!
The judges praised my “many pieces of written thought leadership, and participation on panel discussions and in interviews.“ In a prestigious category with so many talented and worthy finalists, what an honor to be singled out.
Read the press release HERE.
To learn my views on the 3 Rules of Family Governance, read this short piece published in Impact! online magazine on May 2, 2023. There’s also a super-short video clip.
The 3 Rules of Family Governance
Last updated: July 8, 2026
We all know that the three rules in real estate are location, location, location.
My three rules of family governance are communication, communication, communication.
But what do many wealth creators think the three rules are? Control, control, control.
So many wealth creators try to control the behavior of their descendants, through the proverbial “hand from the grave” using restrictive trust provisions that will often survive many decades longer than the wealth creators themselves.
I once read a trust instrument that required the trustees to retain the assets in trust and distribute only income — no principal distributions — to the beneficiaries until they reached age 70! What was the message to the beneficiaries? “My parents never trusted me.”
Sometimes, an extreme level of control makes sense, especially if the beneficiary has a pressing issue, such as a physical or emotional special need, substance abuse or other challenge. I worked with a family a few years ago; the daughter was financially savvy and capable, but the son was in recovery for an addiction issue, and the parents wanted to treat their children unequally, leaving provisions for their daughter to inherit outright and the son to take in trust. I suggested that they set up separate trusts for both of their children, and provide the trustees with broad discretion to distribute principal as they saw fit in the best interests of each of the children. That way, they were not setting up their children for lifelong mutual resentment of unequal treatment.
If the parents do decide to treat their children unequally, my best advice is for them to communicate their reasons in person, giving the children the opportunity to ask questions. Hearing the explanation in the parents’ own voice may go a long way toward avoiding an ugly Will contest later on.
The rule of communication goes beyond communicating the details of the estate plan. It is amazing how many people tell me that their kids (or grandkids) have no idea that their family is wealthy. Your children watch how you live, how you travel, and how you donate. I understand that it’s scary to have “The Money Talk” with your kids. I often say that The Money Talk is even scarier for parents than the dreaded “Sex Talk.” But pretending the wealth doesn’t exist does a disservice to your children, and deprives them of the opportunity to hear directly from you the stories, messages and values that underpin your creation of that wealth.
That is why my three rules of family governance are communication, communication, communication.
Read this short piece on the Decision Tree Before Creating a Family Office, as published in Point of View online magazine on April 3, 2023, also a short video clip.
The Decision Tree Before Creating a Family Office
Last updated: July 8, 2026
If you don’t have the proper team in place to advise on setting up family office structures, you’re doing yourself and your family a disservice. There are many landmines and you can’t just follow the fact pattern of the Lender case without considering a number of other factors.
When I help families think through structuring their family office, some of the first questions that I ask are:
· What is the ideal outcome for your family? What are you solving for?
· In what timeframe?
· Identify the various goals and objectives, which are likely different for every family. Some families establish their family office strictly for investing, others for the roll-up of reporting of all of their investments, and still other families want the ancillary services, whether bill-pay, taxes, managing household staff, next gen education, concierge or any number of other services.
· Identify the various risks the family faces, known and yet unknown.
· Who are the various stakeholders? Are you just focusing on the founder generation and their needs? Or are you looking at their children’s generation G2? Or, are you looking multi-generationally to G3 and beyond? Additional stakeholders might be the CIO, whom you’ve hired in from the outside and want to make sure that they are well-incented to come, to stay and to build their team.
· What services does the family want, how do they want them delivered, and how much are they willing to pay for them?
That all goes into the decision tree of whether you outsource some or all family office functions, collaborate with other families to form a private multi-family office, sign on with a large existing MFO scaled to provide all the needed services, or whether you hire the talent and manage all of those services in-house, with your own dedicated in-house single family office team.
Susan Schoenfeld was quoted in Crain Currency:
March 29, 2023: When family offices cross borders, they encounter challenges … and opportunities.
Click HERE to read the PDF, or read the article online:
Leading the discussion of “Family Office Structures and Best Practices: Managing a Family Office in Today’s World” at the Opal Family Office Winter Forum in my hometown of NYC, on March 9, 2023.
Read this short piece on the importance of shedding light on the elephant in the room that everyone’s thinking about, but nobody’s talking about, as published in Talking Trends online magazine on March 2, 2023, also a short video clip.
This is an important call to action for advisors. If I had not discovered the elephant, everyone’s time would have been wasted on “solutions” that didn’t address the underlying problem.