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Visiting colleges is a great way for a college-bound student to gain a firsthand view and help determine which college is the right fit. To make the most of each visit and as part of your education planning, get prepared with this guide that offers tips, checklists, and thoughtful questions to ask your admissions rep and current students about the academic programs, student life, and the campus.

Social media and other digital accounts have a life of their own. Managing them is one aspect of managing a deceased person's digital estate. Sometimes the problem is simply closing an account while other times, you hope to gain access to a loved one's accumulated photos, videos, or other important files. To help manage your digital accounts and plan ahead, know the rules governing Google accounts, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Dropbox.

Many affluent parents have concerns about the impact a significant inheritance could have on their children. If you're not ready to give the bulk of your estate to charity but you are concerned about the potential impact of inherited wealth on your children, there are other options. They include timing the cash distributions, adding general statements of intent to your estate plan, establishing incentive provisions in your trust—and even creating an incentive trust.

Real estate as an asset class requires constant attention to ever-changing variables. Implementing a defined, analytical, yet flexible asset management process within your family office’s direct investment function is critical to ensure your portfolio is positioned to meet intended goals.

This Passages guide is part one of a two-part series on divorce and division in family philanthropy, featuring tips for what board and staff members can do to prepare and cope. This first part includes case studies on family foundations that have navigated divorce, questions to consider when developing board policies, and perspectives on the implications of divorce on assets and grantees.

This Passages is part two of a two-part series on divorce and division in family philanthropy, featuring tips for what board and staff can do to plan ahead for potential change. The second part includes stories and advice from those who have been through, or advised, families as they divided their philanthropy. Learn more by reading part one, Breaking Up: Divorce in Family Philanthropy.

Understanding the development of family leaders plays an important role as new generations emerge. In this episode, Richard Joyner discusses the path it takes to become a family leader and how to develop the skills and experiences needed for success.

Families hire family office staff with the expectation that the office keeps their information, assets, and reputation protected. To safeguard the families’ interests, it’s critical for family offices to ensure that internal controls take the pragmatic approach, starting with four main areas: segregation of duties, transaction volume, managing complexity, and succession planning.

A private family trust company (PTC) often serves as an excellent governance framework and corporate structure for a virtual family office (VFO) by providing integrated, holistic oversight of fiduciary, investment, tax, philanthropic, governance, and other activity. Learn more about how and why families choose to form a VFO around their PTC, the concept of a VFO Manager, the benefits of a PTC-VFO structure, and roles within a typical structure.

There are several powerful market forces driving the growing interest in adopting collective investment trusts (CITs) as plan investment options. Given its flexibility and structures that can easily and quickly implement new investment strategies, it's unsurprising that CIT assets are rapidly increasing. With the growing attention and advantages of CITs, governance practices around CITs are emerging as factors that warrant considerations by plan fiduciaries when making plan investment option decisions.