Thomas Handler ranks among the most respected estate and tax lawyers in the world. His firm, Handler Thayer LLP, operates in a number of countries and has earned multiple awards for outstanding service to celebrities, billionaires, and athletes. Handler’s years of experience and impressive resume make him an excellent resource when discussing the proper building blocks for a successful family office. He notes that “integration is the absolute top element that is consistently missing in that the family office structure and planning is not tied into the family life, or culture, or their businesses, or their estate plans, or their tax plans. In fact, often all those plans were done by four or five, 10, or in one case that I know of, 31 law firms! So, the result is it’s not integrated. It’s not elegant. You know, there are contradictory, conflicting elements.”
See Thomas M. Kostigen, On the Front Lines, Financial Advisor, December 15, 2017.
Special thanks to Jim Hillhouse (Professional Legal Marketing (PLM, Inc.) for bringing this article to my attention.
