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Serving as a trustee is a huge responsibility and can be fraught with peril in terms of potential liability. Trustees owe fiduciary duties to the trust beneficiaries and often must juggle competing interests. It would behoove any individual who is serving (or contemplating serving) as a trustee to invest the time to educate himself or herself on wh...

Most people feel honored when they are tapped to serve as trustee of a family trust. It is an important leadership position as well as a powerful role in managing a family’s wealth. The trustee also has significant influence over the long-term well being of the beneficiaries. It is a role that is not to be taken lightly. The res...

The following blog post is a contribution from TriState Capital, a Thought Leaders Council member of the Family Office Exchange.Early Monday morning an email is sent to you from a client. He is overseas. His wallet has been stolen. He has no way of getting home. In order to access his account he needs you to give him the pas...

The following insight is a contribution from TriState Capital, a Thought Leaders Council member of the Family Office Exchange.Let’s look at the overall economy so far in 2013. We have:A soaring stock marketA housing market that is recoveringDeclining unemploymentGDP growthFavorable credit marketsThese factors seemed awfully far out of reach a few y...

Many families have managed their wealth for generations and have healthy, productive and successful sixth- and seventh-generation family members to show for their efforts. What are the secrets of their success? One commonality we’ve seen in our more than 20 years of serving families is they’ve made sticking together a priority. Following are seven ...

We recently held our annual Fall Forum in Chicago. This year’s theme was “The Butterfly Effect,” which reflects the theory that a change as subtle as the flap of tiny wings can profoundly change the world. The same can be said about the family enterprise. Every choice you make (or don’t make) has the potential to ripple across your fami...

While process was at the forefront of this year’s Forum, the most poignant moments of the event dealt with why families stick together — the beliefs and values behind all of the how-to discussions. Bestselling author and Founder of Empower Wealth LLC Lee Brower touched on this issue on the first day of the Forum, saying families should plan ac...

If you’re familiar with Greycourt & Co. Founder Greg Curtis, you know that his blog is always a good read. His recent series on common mistakes families make investing after a liquidity event is especially compelling. Curtis notes that businesses tend to sell when the market is at its most overpriced. This means families who sell their business...

Eighty percent of family office employees received a salary increase in 2013, according to our latest benchmarking study, "Family Office Compensation & Benefits." The median reported increase was 4%, up from the 3% consistently seen since the 2008 onset of the great recession. A majority of family offices placed a premium on workplace flex...

If you have you been invited to a family business conference recently or picked up an educational piece on family wealth, you will have noticed the focus placed on next generation development. In particular the 3 E’s of entrepreneurship, education, and engagement. These are important topics, around which there is still a lot of work to be done; how...

At Family Office Exchange (FOX), one of the questions we hear most frequently is:“How many single family offices are there?”Unfortunately, there is not a clear answer. There is an older, often-quoted statistic of between 3,000 and 5,000 single family offices in the United States – but the origin of those figures is unknown. More recently, Family We...

Whether you already have wills, trusts and other estate planning documents in place or need to have them created, there are a number of priorities to consider as you move forward with the legacy planning process.Here are six steps that may be appropriate for you to complete as you consider the ongoing management and ultimate disposition of your wea...

How does a family know when they are evolving from a family business into a family enterprise? When the collective activities of the family grow beyond the boundaries of the original business, there is evidence of an emerging family enterprise. The evidence appears gradually over time - when a vacation property is shared with all of the child...

In spite of growing complexities, families around the world have managed to stay together for generations, and they reap significant benefits from the concentration of purchasing power and the preservation of family capital. The crisis of 2008 demonstrated clearly the advantages that families with private capital have - by not being forced to...

Measuring successSometimes the greatest challenge for a family is to agree on how they will measure the “success” of the enterprise in each generation. The metrics of success should be tied to the current goals and priorities of the family, since they must be viewed in tandem. We can’t expect strong family leaders to emerge without investing financi...