McDermott Will & Schulte, a global law firm

Family offices allow high-net-worth families to consolidate management and administration of their personal, business, tax and charitable concerns. The very scale of these offices, however, creates complexities that span numerous legal disciplines. Our private client team has extensive experience structuring and advising many of the oldest and largest family offices in the United States and abroad. We serve as trusted advisors to family office clients by helping them navigate these complex legal issues, with the ultimate goal of identifying potential problems before they occur and creating unique solutions to help each family office achieve its objectives.

Acting as the family office’s private general counsel, we draw on the experience of lawyers throughout the firm to provide clear answers to our clients’ most pressing questions. While our work with new family offices typically focuses on tax-efficient family office structuring and maximizing estate planning opportunities, the lawyers in our family office practice continue to counsel clients on the many other legal issues that face family offices every day, including federal, state and local income tax planning and compliance, fiduciary and trust accounting issues, securities regulation and compliance with the SEC family office exemption, structuring of pooled investment vehicles, private foundation creation and administration, privacy and data protection, litigation and alternative dispute resolution, employment compliance for household and family office staff, and the hiring of local counsel to handle real estate transactions, divorces and other personal legal needs.

The concerns of today’s closely held business owners and high-net-worth individuals are global—both geographically and in the breadth of legal issues that require attention. Such clients have assets, businesses and family members located worldwide. Effective transfer and income tax planning is just the first step in addressing the management and transmission of holdings that may include companies, real estate, farms and ranches, marketable and non-marketable investments, private aircraft, and artwork and other collectibles. Effective implementation of philanthropic goals is also an important objective for many individuals and families. More than ever, wealthy clients need personal legal advisors who provide sophisticated counsel in a complex, dynamic environment, and who offer direct access to the cross-disciplinary resources of a full-service law firm.

The lawyers and non-lawyer professionals in our Private Client & Wealth Management practice have extensive experience providing creative, customized solutions to our clients’ most sensitive and pressing needs. Our guidance is multidimensional—we help clients make critical decisions that affect important personal, business, tax, civic and charitable concerns.

We marshal and deploy the full resources of the Firm to develop and implement effective financial, business and legal strategies. When disputes with family members, business partners, or tax, regulatory and law enforcement officials arise, we help clients achieve resolution through mediation, negotiated settlements and, when necessary, civil and criminal litigation.

Our clients include US and international business owners, executives, families, family offices, fiduciaries, private trust companies, public charities, private charities, closely held businesses, private equity fund partners, investment managers, and publicly traded, family-controlled companies. We provide counsel in a wide range of areas, including wealth transfer and generation-skipping planning, business succession planning, representation of executors and trustees, family office and private trust company structure, creation and operation, charitable gift and family philanthropic planning.

Clients and peers alike praise us for the quality of our personal and business counsel. Year after year, Chambers Global, Chambers USA, Worth, Citywealth, The Best Lawyers in America, and other publications and organizations have recognized our group and individual practitioners in the areas of trust and estate planning and litigation. Members of our team are respected as thought leaders, and frequently speak and write on a wide variety of private client issues.

Resources

2025 Federal Estate, Gift and GST Tax Rates & Exemptions

For more than a quarter of a century, the firm’s private client disputes team has been a full-time, full-service group of lawyers, representing fiduciaries and other parties involved in will contests, trust contests, will and trust construction and reformation suits, and other fiduciary litigation.

There is no substitute for experience, whether defending a fiduciary charged with personal exposure for handling an estate, trust or guardianship, representing a plaintiff in a will or trust contest, or navigating a fiduciary or non-fiduciary party through the pitfalls of guardianship or charitable and exempt organization litigation. From having handled hundreds of cases, we have a keen understanding of the critical issues involving the defense of executors and trustees as well as representing plaintiffs in will and trust contests and parties in guardianship controversy, including many complicated will and trust construction suits, charitable and exempt-entity qualification problems, and estate and fiduciary tax-related litigation.

We regularly develop and apply creative solutions that can help deliver timely, client-favorable resolutions to a dispute. Drawing on the resources of one of the world’s top-tier private client practice groups and a strong bench of first-chair lawyers in the firm’s litigation department, our team achieves consistently strong results for clients on cases involving wills, trusts and guardianships, as well as in charitable and exempt-organization litigation. Our dedicated litigators apply deep understanding of oftentimes complex and multifaceted legal issues to develop strong case strategy at the outset and deliver consistent results at a fair cost.