Planning ahead is the most important thing you can do to protect yourself and your family. Besides protecting your home from a possible burglary, it is important to think about your personal security. This article offers 28 tips for preventing a break-in and another 13 for keeping family members safe.
In the wake of SEC regulation, the best course of action for every family with a family office is to identify promptly the most desirable options for bringing their family into compliance by March 30, 2012 and, at the same time, helping it to turn arid compliance dollars into an optimal structure for achieving its long-term value.
The new regulatory requirements stemming from the passage of Dodd-Frank will certainly be a costly addition to the reporting framework of the alternative investment industry. However, this new era of heightened regulatory and compliance procedures also brings the potential benefits of financial stability and investor protection.
This guide covers wealth management and tax planning strategies to consider before year-end and into 2012. Topics include tax management, wealth transfer planning, education funding, philanthropy, retirement, liabilities management, insurance, business owner issues, tax implications of health care reform, and building a strategic plan.
Power failures, IT system crashes, supply chain problems or a flu epidemic can cripple a family office as completely as a natural disaster or terrorist attack. Developing and implementing a business continuity plan can help bolster a family business's defenses against such risks and serve as a first line of defense against losses.
The SEC and Cayman Islands Monetary Authority are establishing mechanisms for ongoing consultation, cooperation, and exchange of information related to the oversight of regulated entities that operate across national borders. Each agency intends to provide the other with assistance obtaining information that is needed to ensure compliance within th...
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission finalized several amendments to the registration and compliance requirements applicable to certain investment companies, including family offices. Family offices that trade futures contracts or even hire managers that include futures contracts in their portfolios would have to register under the Investment C...
Understanding what drives behaviors is a starting point for establishing acceptable family norms as well as addressing the unacceptable. It also may provide insight that can help reduce conflict, establish better communication patterns, and increase levels of trust among family members.
Creating an educational experience that fosters peer exchange and involvement entails more work and risk than a simple lecture, but family members will leave the session with practical skills, deepened relationships and enjoyable memories.
In addition to guiding the family office, helping owners to think about issues that impact their family's goals is an important part of the family office CEO's role. While important to all financial families, these principles and practices become more critical as families grow in size and complexity and should be revisited regularly.
The key to overcoming the paradoxes is looking at a family not as the sum of its wealth, but as a collection of living, breathing individuals drawn together through their affinity for the family. It requires a willingness to fight the natural impulses that lead other families to return to their shirtsleeves.
Family meetings can serve to update and educate family members on business and investment issues, reinforce family ties, and resolve conflicts. They can also be a lot of fun. But figuring out how to get the family members to the event, how to keep their attention once they've arrived, and how to make it fun in the process is no easy feat.
It is now becoming more common for families to focus their overall estate planning strategy on communicating a family vision expressing the philosophical and moral imperatives of the wealth creators, rather than merely on minimizing taxes. The common structure for providing incentives to encourage or alter behavior is the trust.
Our advice to anyone hesitating to bring about an intergenerational family foundation because the time does not seem right or there are too many family issues to confront is — just get started. There is no better time than now to have the satisfaction of helping others and, at the same time, to give your family the opportunity to grow and to disco...
As the financial world grows increasingly integrated and jurisdictions share ever more information, taxpayers who continue to hold undeclared taxable accounts are at much greater risk of being discovered. The new voluntary disclosure program may represent the best chance to come clean with the IRS.