How to Set Up a Family Office: A Complete Guide
The conventional wisdom says you need $250 million to justify a family office. The conventional wisdom is increasingly wrong. Technology, the rise of virtual and hybrid models, and a growing ecosystem of outsourced specialists have brought sophisticated wealth coordination within reach of families managing $10 million and above. The question of how to set up a family office is no longer reserved for the ultra-rich. It belongs to any family whose financial life has outgrown the capacity of a single advisor to manage coherently. That said, "within reach" and "identical" are different concepts. A family with $15 million and a family with $500 million will build very different structures, and the worst mistake is importing a model designed for a fortune ten times your size. This guide covers the full spectrum: when family office thinking becomes relevant (earlier than most people assume), how to choose the right model for your actual scale, the legal and governance ar...