Family Office Readiness Scorecard

For many families, the allure of a single-family office to manage their assets, streamline estate planning, and coordinate their shared needs is appealing. After all, if your family’s hard work has helped you make enough money to consider the benefits of having your own family office, why not proceed to the logical step of setting up the personalized services a great family office can provide? But in our experience, too often families make the decision about starting a family office without adequately thinking through important questions that may determine its success in the long run. One family we know enthusiastically decided to create a family office after they had a major liquidity event. “After we sold the business, everyone was telling us we had to have a family office. It was a best practice. So, we visited a couple family offices and set about building our own team,” they shared with us. But rushing into that decision as a means of guiding investments after their liquidity event didn’t turn out well. “It wasn’t until later that we realized none of us was clear on why we truly needed the family office or what we wanted it to do.”

We’ve created a scorecard to help your family determine whether your family is ready to start a family office.

Share this scorecard with family members to see if you’re on the same page. If you see lots of green and yellow, you’re probably in a good place to proceed to next steps. If there’s an abundance of red or gray (or a wide variety of responses), you may need more time to align so that you are setting your family office up for success.

Adapted from an article written by Judy Lin Walsh and Alison Isaacson for Trusts & Estates Magazine, July-August 2024.