Is It Time To Rethink Your Single-Family Office?

Karl represented the archetype of the self-made man. He built a successful real estate business and then a single-family office (SFO) managing $300 million+ in assets. After his passing, some members of the family, which by then comprised three generations of adults dispersed across the U.S, said they wanted to have access to some of the family’s capital to deploy independently. But other family members felt just as strongly that things were going well and there was no need to change the status quo.

This scenario is not uncommon. A single-family office that was originally launched to serve a small group of related people can often be too limited to address the complex needs of an extended, multigenerational, geographically dispersed family, particularly during times of upheaval, growth, or transition.