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In this interview, attorney John Litchfield of Foley & Lardner’s Labor & Employment group discusses the key considerations family offices should keep in mind when it comes to domestic workers in the family office environment. Along with insights on household staff salary and wage treatments in accordance with the Fair Labor Standards Act (F...

Employing service providers in your home carries considerable risk. If not handled with extreme care, the process of hiring, termination, and managing day-to-day responsibilities can create liability—and even result in claims of discrimination and retaliation by the employee. This report provides a snapshot of an increasingly complex employment lan...

To effectively serve as a trustee, it's crucial to understand your fiduciary duties. Even trustees with the best of intentions can create liability for themselves by being unprepared for the job or by not fully understanding their obligations. Learn more about some of the common mistakes family trustees make that can lead to lawsuits and other...

Serving as a trustee for your family can be a valuable experience for you, while also providing an important service to your family. But before you accept the position, make sure that you understand the role you will play for the family and are willing to accept the responsibilities and liability that come with it.

Taking on the role of a direct household employer can be complicated—even for households with a single employee. This guide includes best practices for navigating the complex environment of household employment and provides practical advice on how to avoid the legal, financial, and reputational consequences associated with non-compliant employment.

Ultimately, how well your wealth transfer plan fulfills your legacy and meets the needs of the next—and future—generations depends on whom you name as your trustee(s). This makes your trustee selection one of the most critical aspects of an already complex wealth planning process. To help navigate this selection process, work with a framework built...

Defining a family enterprise’s governance structures is a journey, not a destination. In this webcast Stephanie Traversy, Vice President of Personal Development and Governance at Bridgegreen Capital, will unpack four critical milestones along the path to purposeful governance. She’ll cover why families need to establish their higher purpose and lon...

For family offices, providing the highest level of service to their family clients includes ensuring the staff in their homes are not only skilled and qualified, but also trustworthy and ethical. However, the vetting process at every level—from housekeepers to directors of residence—has become more challenging as more applicants misrepresent themse...

For business and wealth creators, preserving the family in the midst of wealth is far more difficult than creating the wealth. Integrating second and third generations into ownership and decision-making is something business builders haven’t yet experienced. We focus on 14 strategies families can use to integrate rising generations and pass down re...

Hiring domestic staff such as nannies, personal assistants, and housekeepers can expose you to liability issues and danger from unscrupulous employees. It is important to understand your areas of vulnerability and take steps to protect your family and your finances. Whether you hire your own employees or the family office hires them, three often ov...

When it comes to reaching your family’s financial objectives and perpetuating its wealth, integrated family wealth planning is critical. A family governance system can significantly facilitate that process. This evergreen guide offers best practices and key elements of an effective family governance system, one that can be instrumental and flexible...

Your household employees are necessary and helpful, but they present a risk, be it from accidents, reckless behavior, or bad intentions. While there is no way to minimize the concerns entirely, establishing clear communication, crisp policies, and appropriate checks and balances can prevent, or at least decrease most issues. We’ve created a checkli...

The complex, convergent nature of risks facing high-net-worth families requires family offices to adopt both a holistic and strategic approach to risk management than many have in the past. The ones who can make the change will be best positioned to successfully navigate the challenges that range from overarching trends of growing families to incre...

When done well, a trustee’s service can have a profoundly positive impact on a family; when done poorly, a trustee’s service can create or exacerbate fissures within a family, dissipate family wealth, create personal liability for the trustee, and create a public spectacle that sullies the family’s good name and reputation. For key employees in fam...

We have all been the new person at some point or another—the new person on the block, the freshman at the big university, a manager in a new office. In such hard-to-navigate situations, training and communications are integral parts of the on-boarding process. When both employee and employer are informed about one another’s needs, personalities, an...