How to Assemble Your Family Wealth Management Team

Over the years, I've had the privilege of working with hundreds of wealthy individuals who took different paths to financial success. Nearly all of them eventually came to the same realization: Managing significant wealth is too complex for any one person to handle alone.

Indeed, those with large amounts of assets face a bevy of financial, legal, and personal decisions that can have wide-ranging implications for themselves, their families, and their legacies.

That's why it's not just beneficial but essential to have a dedicated, trusted team of experts on your side.

Here's how to build your roster.

1. Financial consultant—your point person, whose job is to become deeply familiar with your complete financial picture and have a firm grasp on your challenges, goals, and needs. With this knowledge, they can help you recruit the right supporting players.
2. Investment advisor—critical to helping navigate complex investment considerations, from managing equity compensation to evaluating alternative investments. They can offer specific knowledge and expertise in financial markets, provide tailored guidance, and will work with the rest of your team to help ensure your investments conform with your estate plan, tax strategy, and other goals.
3. Tax advisor—your guide to the ever-evolving tax code. They can work with you to develop smart strategies to manage your income, potentially maximize your investment gains while minimizing taxes, and help capture available deductions.
4. Estate planner—works with your tax advisor to help transfer your wealth tax-efficiently. Without a well-structured estate plan, even the most substantial fortunes can be diminished by taxes, family disputes, and legal fees.
5. Legacy consultant—can help resolve potential conflicts by providing a holistic approach to wealth transfer, addressing not just the financial aspects but also the emotional, relational, and ethical dimensions of managing and preserving a family's legacy.
6. Charitable specialist—a philanthropic advisor who can help devise a giving strategy that reflects your values and maximizes the impact of your donations through the most tax-efficient means possible, be it setting up a private foundation, establishing a donor-advised fund, or simply helping choose the right organizations to support.
7. Risk management specialist—focuses on preserving your wealth by identifying potential risks and creating a plan to help mitigate them. This often includes using complex insurance and legal strategies, as well as continuously monitoring your situation and managing unexpected occurrences.
8. Lending specialist—specializes in sophisticated banking and borrowing options. They can help you determine the best way to leverage your assets to meet your cash flow needs.

Experience is the single most important consideration when selecting your wealth team. You want licensed professionals with compatible approaches who come highly recommended.

Suppose you're the head of a household and want to ensure your spouse and two kids, one of whom has special needs, are well protected after you're gone. Dedicated to preserving your assets, your legacy consultant can connect you with tax and trust specialists to design a comprehensive estate plan that can help minimize exposure to federal estate taxes through the use of trusts and strategic gifting. Likewise, your investment advisor can assist in the management of trust assets, while a risk specialist can review your insurance coverage for available options to meet your needs.

In addition to their cumulative professional experience, a key advantage of this team is the ability to confer with one another and your consultant so all parts of this panoramic approach align to help you achieve your goals.