Creating the right structure to align generations on family legacy and long-term wealth
By Brian G. Bissell, Senior Vice President, Client Advisor, Whittier Trust
Wealth planning can be straightforward when one person holds the reins. A single decision-maker with a clear vision can work efficiently with a team of specialists, such as financial advisors and estate attorneys, and achieve good outcomes. But what happens when that model no longer fits the family?
From generational transitions to liquidity events that create a significant windfall for multiple heirs, the moment shared wealth requires shared decision-making is when having family wealth governance and structure will pay dividends.
The Problem with Going It Alone
Families that reach this level of complexity without outside guidance tend to make the same mistake: They address each problem separately, with a different expert, at a different time. While each engaged consultant is competent, none of them are connected in the right way to create the continuity needed for a sound generational wealth transfer strategy.
Families that have successful multigenerational wealth planning in place tend to have one thing in common: outsourcing the job of keeping track of the full picture. Enter family office governance.
There’s a common assumption that family office governance models are primarily relevant when there’s an operating business involved. In practice, the core challenge is the same regardless of how the wealth was created.
Governance Isn’t Just for Family Businesses
For family business owners, the issues are visible. They may have overlapping ownership structures, shareholders who don’t work in the business, and decisions that affect both family relationships and enterprise value. Some families have developed detailed family charters and governance documents that define which decisions belong to shareholders, which belong to the board, and which go to the family council. Those charters are only as useful as the institution that helps enforce and evolve them. Without continuity, a 70-page family constitution becomes a document no one ever references.
For families whose wealth came through a liquidity event, a concentrated equity position, or an inheritance rather than a business, the governance challenge is less structural but no less real. Wealth that exceeds what a single generation can consume becomes a multigenerational question by default. Who stewards it, how it’s distributed, what guardrails exist, and what values it’s meant to reflect… These decisions all need a deft, governing hand to ensure that the family wealth, earned through discipline, risk tolerance, and a strong work ethic, has longevity. Transferring those values alongside the assets doesn’t happen without intention.
In both cases, what families are really managing is the gap between individual and collective interests. A family office for ultra-high-net-worth families is not there to make decisions for the family, but to provide the structure that enables good decisions. We take a family’s core values and translate them into a tangible plan.
What Good Family Governance Can Look Like
No two families arrive at this work the same way, and there’s no single template for what it looks like in practice.
Some families start with a mission statement, which is different from the business’s mission statement. It defines collective values, articulates what the wealth is meant to accomplish, and gives future generations something to orient around. It’s like a north star. The two documents serve different purposes and answer to different stakeholders. Having both and understanding the distinction tends to reduce friction when family decisions and business decisions collide.
Other groups arrive with a family charter already in place. That’s a governance document that maps decision-making authority among shareholders, executives, and family leaders. The challenge is usually what happens after the consultant who built it moves on. A charter no one references isn’t governance. An engaged family office provides the continuity that makes those frameworks functional over time.
At the individual level, families with significant complexity often benefit from dedicated advisory teams organized by generation or household (rather than a single shared advisor navigating competing interests) and teams that coordinate internally and operate from a shared understanding of the family’s broader goals. That integration is vital. An estate plan drafted without visibility into a family member’s ownership stake can create real consequences, the kind that don’t surface until it’s expensive to fix. The through-line across all of these is continuity. A family office doesn’t replace the specialists. Instead, it determines when to bring them in, helps identify the right fit, and remains at the table after they’ve moved on.
The Long View
The families who benefit most from this kind of relationship are the ones who engage before the complexity becomes a crisis. The necessary experts are most effective when they’re in place before the governance questions become contentious, before the estate plans are drafted in isolation, and before a family charter exists, but no one knows how to use it.
A family office doesn’t replace the specialists. It coordinates them, calls on them in a strategic order, and provides the continuity that no individual engagement can. For families managing wealth across generations, that steady guidance isn’t a service add-on. It’s the foundation upon which everything else is built.
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Brian Bissell is a Senior Vice President, Client Advisor in the Orange County office of Whittier Trust. He provides a full range of wealth management, family office, philanthropic, real estate, and trust services.