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At some point on your family journey and through the key life stages, you may take a step back and realize the wealth and legacy you’ve created are going to live on for generations. As you begin to reflect, you can look to the legacy and estate planning guide in this Digest as a starting point. You’ll also find helpful checklists, thoughtful questi...

Each family’s legacy is as unique as the family itself. It can be a bloodline, a name, heirlooms, a legal entity or family stories, myths, and artifacts. In this fourth and final report in the series on family business succession, key insights are shared on the important role that legacies play in uniting the core purpose of the business with the f...

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.

The current next-generation family members are changing the way families view wealth, no longer focusing on creating wealth for wealth’s sake. It’s still about creating wealth, but now more questions are being asked about, ‘how can we use this wealth to improve society?’ and less about ‘what we can do to just keep building it.’ This process is refe...

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...

Slowing population growth is a global phenomenon. From this research report, learn how to establish a framework by which to understand the dynamics between demographics and economics, along with the likely effect on economic growth and financial markets in the coming decades.

We’ll examine how to successfully navigate the challenges that arise with the aging and cognitive decline of a family member and/or board member from the perspective of the family office. Aging experts emphasize several strategies for identifying cognitive impairment and ensuring early detection, along with resources and approaches for handling the...

Families often find it challenging to talk about long-term plans and wishes of their aging parents. But it’s never a good idea to wait until there’s a crisis to rally family members together on a plan that will address mom or dad’s needs and wishes regarding healthcare, living arrangements, and long-term financial care. Knowing how to get the conve...

There are few issues in family business that create more conflict and tension than the employment of family members. The complexities involved and the breakdowns in communication and trust can contribute significantly to the alarmingly high rate of failed intergenerational transitions in family business. The good news is that there is a way for fam...

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...

The death of a loved one is a difficult and emotional time for a family. There is often additional stress if you are appointed as the executor of the will and trustee of your family’s trusts, especially if the deceased had been the sole manager of substantial family assets and wealth. For an untrained person, it can be a daunting role. For these re...

Occasional memory lapses are not uncommon, but there may be more going on when forgetfulness begins to affect daily functioning, performance or safety. With more than 5 million Americans diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, it is essential for Family Office Executives to understand more about cognitive decline and recognize the warning signs early. ...

Strategy is often thought of as an art form—an unstructured, intuitive exercise propelled by inspiration and brilliance. However, just like finance, operations, or marketing, strategy is a functional discipline with tools, frameworks, processes, best practices, and metrics. This checklist is end-to-end process for developing and executing a comp...

Helping an elderly parent adjust to their changing needs and circumstances can be challenging for both parties. While parents are adapting to major lifestyle changes, their children are often relied on to help make important decisions about their care. To ease this potentially challenging transition, this checklist contains a series of topics you c...