Wealth should buy you time, but it has an uncanny habit of creating complexity.

Cross-border tax, prenups, trust design, manager selection, governance, risk, reputation, estate & domicile, residency & immigration, asset protection, liquidity & concentration, custody, treasury & bill payments, consolidated reporting, due diligence on private deals, co-investments, philanthropy strategy, impact policy, next-gen education, family charter & succession, dispute resolution, cybersecurity & data privacy, aircraft and yacht management, art collections… the list seems endless.

And that’s why advisors exist.

The best family offices don’t go it alone. They assemble a team of internal and external advisors to manage the complexity wealth creates. The best can become trusted confidants for decades.

Finding an advisor isn’t hard. Finding the right one is.

You’re choosing someone who may become almost part of the family. Someone with influence over investments, structures, and values. Someone who will be there through the hardest chapters: succession, conflict, divorce, death, and the rebuilding that follows.

Here’s what matters most and how to avoid the traps that trip up even sophisticated families.

Before you look out, look in. What does your family actually need?

It’s easy to rush into hiring decisions, especially in new family offices where everyone is eager to get moving. But the best offices pause to define their priorities first, whether it’s investment oversight, governance, education, or administration. Clarity at the start saves years of missteps later.

So, understand what the family needs. And distill that need to its simplest, most precise form. Understand exactly what you’re solving for. You’ll never find the right advisor without clarity.

Many families assume conflicts of interest are only a big-bank problem. They’re not.

Retired tax lawyer and family advisor Philip Marcovici warns:

“Everybody has conflicts of interest of some kind, and for the wealth owner, the best thing is to accept that this is the case, and to be aware of what the conflicts of interest are, so that they can be managed.”

So rather than hoping or pretending your advisors won’t have conflicts. it’s more productive to acknowledge and manage those conflicts. Transparent conflicts are much easier to manage than hidden ones.

Positive signs to look for:

✅ Advisors who openly acknowledge where their interests differ from yours
✅ A compensation model you could explain to a teenager
✅ Professionals who admit what they don’t know and bring in specialists

Red flags to watch for:

🚩 Fee structures that reward product pushing
🚩 Trust companies pressured to keep assets in-house
🚩 Advisors who discourage second opinions

Questions to ask:

❔ How are you compensated across your services?
❔ What incentives might not align with the family's interests?
❔ What do you not do well, and who do you recommend instead?

Peter Drucker famously said culture eats strategy for breakfast. In advising, it eats everything: trust, communication, and results.

Ask any family that has fired a big-name firm. They rarely mention investment performance. They talk about chemistry failures, misunderstandings, and a lack of genuine care.

Before you sign anything, look under the hood:

❔ Are they building a business for acquisition or retention?
❔ Do they measure success by AUM growth or by family outcomes?
❔ Are they investing in their people or are they churning through relationship managers?

A great advisor is a culture carrier, not a salesperson.

Advisory firms don’t own factories. Their key asset is their people. So ask questions about their people:

❔ How long has the senior team been there?
❔ What does turnover look like?
❔ What is the average tenure with families like yours?
❔ How do you invest in learning for your team and for your clients?
❔ What happens if our primary advisor leaves?
❔ Can you share examples of situations where you told a client “no”?
❔ What would make you resign from a client relationship?
❔ How do you coordinate across disciplines you don’t cover in-house?
❔ What are your firm’s succession plans?

Tip: Google their Glassdoor reviews, not just their website bios.

Don’t be flattered into working with a firm whose client base doesn’t resemble yours.

If you’ve got $50M and they mainly serve billionaire families, you’ll feel it… through deprioritization, over-engineered solutions, or misunderstandings.

Questions to ask:

❔ What’s your average client profile?
❔ How many families do you serve?
❔ What’s your ratio of clients to advisors?
❔ What governance tools do you offer for families at our stage?

Remember, Big firms bring depth but also bureaucracy, whereas small firms bring intimacy but key-person risk. There’s no perfect answer, only the right fit for you.

Philip Marcovici advises families should take control of the relationship with their banks and advisors:

“Consider not signing the standard documents banks put in front of you. Instead, set out your own terms, and agree in writing what service you expect.”

Do this with every advisor:Get fees documented

A clean fee structure means cleaner incentives.

If you want world-class advice, you need to show up as a world-class client. That means being clear about your needs and values, responding promptly, and never being afraid to ask questions, even the ones that might feel “dumb.”

Treat the relationship with your advisors as a true partnership, and don’t hesitate to speak up when something feels off. At the end of the day, you are the ultimate steward of your wealth, and that responsibility can’t be delegated.

Few choices shape a family’s future more than who they trust as advisors. The cost of bad advice can compound over time.

Worse, it can poison the well and make the family doubt the process itself. “Good enough” isn’t good enough. Take your time, do the homework, put expectations in writing, test for culture and conflicts, and trust your instincts.

The right advisor is a force multiplier; the wrong one is a tax on your time.
Your family’s future is worth the search.