How advice works
Family office
A family office is a single team that coordinates every financial discipline for a household (typically law, tax, insurance and investment) rather than specializing in one of them.
The original single-family offices existed for very large fortunes, where employing your own lawyers and accountants was practical. The structure spread downward because the coordination problem does not scale with wealth: a household with four uncoordinated advisors has the same gaps regardless of the balance.
What distinguishes a family office from a good advisor with a referral network is who answers for the whole outcome. In a referral arrangement each professional is responsible for their own piece and nobody is responsible for the joins.
What it does not do
Calling a firm a family office does not by itself mean the disciplines are coordinated. The term is not protected. The checkable question is whether the same organization actually does the legal drafting, the tax work and the investment work, or refers three of them out and calls the referral integration.
This entry is a general explanation, not advice for your situation, and it deliberately avoids thresholds and figures, because those are the part most likely to be out of date. Reviewed August 27, 2026. If a decision turns on any of it, ring the office rather than relying on a page.
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