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.

Managing substantial personal, family, and business wealth requires careful coordination across family dynamics, governance considerations, competing interests, and evolving legal and regulatory frameworks. Our lawyers help you navigate that complexity so you can preserve and grow your wealth and protect your legacy across generations.

Our private client lawyers advise individuals, families, and family offices across the full spectrum of private wealth matters. From tax planning to succession, we help you structure and manage wealth in alignment with your long-term goals. Our lawyers represent key stakeholders, including:

• Entrepreneurs, executives, and investment principals
• Closely held and family-controlled enterprises
• Multigenerational families and family offices
• Fiduciaries and private trust companies
• Philanthropic and charitable organizations

We advise on wealth structures that span borders, asset classes, and generations. Our private client lawyers coordinate across the firm’s global tax, corporate, real estate, litigation, and regulatory practices to deliver integrated, cross-border guidance. We also incorporate your philanthropic priorities into your broader strategy to support the legacy you want to build.

Our lawyers help you manage diverse assets, including closely held and international businesses, real estate holdings, marketable and private investments, digital assets, intellectual property, and other complex holdings. When business ownership and personal wealth are closely linked, we align business strategy with long-term wealth planning and succession goals.

For sophisticated wealth structures, tax planning is critical to preserving value. We develop domestic and international tax strategies designed to minimize tax exposure and facilitate efficient wealth transfer. We also help you navigate evolving regulations, cross-border obligations, and complex financial structures to support compliance and reduce operational disruption.

When disputes arise, we guide you through sensitive family, business, fiduciary, and regulatory matters with discretion. We pursue resolutions that de-escalate conflict through negotiation and mediation, while remaining prepared to defend your interests in court when necessary.

Our private client practice supports you through every stage of wealth creation, growth, and transition. We develop strategies informed by the interconnected nature of business interests and family dynamics. Our lawyers help you preserve your wealth, support continuity, and protect your legacy over the long term.

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.