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Managing family wealth over the long-term requires careful thought and a well-structured estate plan. Before making specific decisions about what’s best for your wealth, it’s wise to spend time considering what it is you really want to see happen with it. There are steps you can take—including considering trust options—to help create a legacy plan that both reflects your values and incorporates tax-efficient ways to transfer your assets.

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 around understanding your specific needs and selection criteria across three core fiduciary capabilities.

The art environment is diverse and constantly changing. Wealth planning with art offers many opportunities, but it is also quite nuanced. Acquiring, managing, valuing, and transferring art require thoughtful planning and the advice from trusted experts and advisors to realize the full value of individual works or a collection. For those who have an affinity for art, we explore the key considerations when it comes to incorporating art into your wealth planning and management—including the art relationship, the value of art, appraising art, transferring art, and selling art.

The 2018 U.S. Trust Insights on Wealth and Worth® study asked nearly one thousand high-net-worth individuals about their approach to building wealth and the extent to which they are using it to achieve their goals and support the causes they care about most. The study found that while wealth provides the freedom to do more, it also brings increased obligations, expectations and demands.

Estate planning is often part of a divorce settlement, and negotiation of these terms can be as integral to the divorce settlement as allocation of parental responsibilities, support issues, or division of marital estate. For example, even a relatively simple Marital Settlement Agreement may generally contain waivers of an ex-spouse’s right to make claims to the other party’s estate upon death, including rights to property and to act as a trustee or executor of the estate.

Families are often overwhelmed by the complexity and sense of burden that comes with managing all the component parts of wealth across generations. More concerning, though, is the lost opportunities and the loss of capital that results from not getting it right. But owning and managing significant wealth does not have to be difficult, and learning from the ten most common mistakes that a family office investor makes can help the process become easier.