In this fireside chat, Thomas Handler shares lessons from advising wealthy families on family office and estate structures. He discusses risk, planning, family communication, and preparing a business for a sale.
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About the guest
Thomas Handler. Thomas Handler advises families on single family office setup, tax, trust and estate planning, asset protection, premarital planning, and risk management. He says he has personally represented over 130 billionaires and his firm has worked with approximately 600 family offices.
Key takeaways
- Handler says early positioning helped him build relationships with wealthy families. He joined an elite Chicago business club and chose a home in a community with many senior executives.
- He says serving wealthy families requires strong quantitative skills and coordinated advice across tax, estate, corporate, international, and benefits matters.
- Handler emphasizes giving clients direct advice, including telling them when a proposed business decision appears unwise.
- He recommends reviewing family office structures regularly because tax, asset protection, and estate laws change.
- Handler says many family offices begin as C corporations without considering whether an LLC taxed as a partnership could better suit early expenses or other needs.
- He says families and advisers often underestimate risk, and describes recommending that clients place 10% of net worth in an offshore trust.
- For family businesses, Handler says children should gain experience elsewhere before joining the family firm; his own rule is three years.
- He identifies hard work, intellectual curiosity, written plans, sounding boards, and clear family communication as traits he sees among successful clients.
- Handler recommends cleaning up company records, governance, audits, and board processes before approaching potential buyers or investors.
Best quotes
"And so, you want to target who you want to work with. You want to start high from the beginning."
"And I will tell them exactly the truth, whether they want to hear it or not."
"And people want to be told the truth."
"And the time you spend that one day a year with your advisors doing it will result in a huge payback."
"We've never encountered a billionaire family where we couldn't find at least one egregious flaw, typically several."
"And you can't get the right answer for these big families without that team, and that's what nobody does."
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