Family Office

Definition: The family office is an investment and administrative center that is organized and overseen by the family council. Family offices are usually very common within large and wealthy families in business, whose members express a need for getting personal financial, banking, accounting, and other advice.

Purpose: To provide advice on personal investment planning, taxes, insurance coverage, estate planning, career counseling and other topics of interest to individual family members.

Membership: The family office is a quite separate operation from the business, although a few of its members may work in the business as well. The office is usually populated by professional managers who monitor the investments, tax compliance, insurance, financial planning, and intra-family transactions such as gifts of stocks and estate plans.[1]

[1] Ivan Lansberg, Succeeding Generations: Realizing the Dream of Families in Business (Harvard Business School Press, 1999).