By: Dr. Tamara Patzer
In brief: Family offices are discussed as if they were only for billionaires. A New Orleans tax attorney who wrote a book on the subject says the decision is more practical, and six plain questions can tell an owner whether the need is a full office or just better coordination. This explainer uses current national wealth data and the author’s own words.
The words family office conjure marble lobbies and private jets. The reality is usually a handful of people and a shared system that keep a family’s money, taxes, legal papers and records from working against one another. Whether an owner needs one is an ordinary business decision, and it can be tested with a few plain questions. Todd M. Villarrubia, a tax and estate attorney in New Orleans, wrote Entrepreneurial B.E.A.S.T. Mode™ to explain the idea to people who build companies and have never thought of themselves as candidates. These are the questions he would put on the table.
What is the family trying to protect?
Start with purpose, since structure follows it. A family may want to keep a company together, fund the next generation’s education, support a cause or simply make sure that nobody is left with a mess. Those goals call for different arrangements.
The book defines the subject in one sentence: “The family office manages the financial and personal affairs of a wealthy family across generations.” The key words are across generations. An arrangement built only for this year’s tax return is accounting. One built to carry values and assets through decades is something else, and it needs a different kind of attention.
Who is looking at the whole picture today?
This is the question that most often exposes the gap. Many owners have a lawyer, an accountant, an investment adviser and an insurance agent, and each does good work. Nobody sits above them and sees all of it.
Villarrubia names the problem directly: “While these individuals are valuable resources, they don’t form a cohesive team on their own.” If the honest answer to who looks at the whole picture is that the owner does, in spare moments, the family has already found its need.
How large is the group that faces this?
Larger than the headlines imply. The U.S. Small Business Administration counts 36,207,130 small businesses in the country, which together employ 62.3 million people. Behind each is an owner with some version of the problem: assets in a company, a family that depends on it and advisers who rarely speak.
The Federal Reserve’s latest Survey of Consumer Finances, released October 9, 2026, puts 2025 median family net worth at $215,900 and the mean at $1.24 million. The gap between the two numbers shows how unevenly wealth is spread. It also suggests that complexity can arrive well before a family would be called rich.
Is the need about size or about complexity?
Both, though complexity often comes first. The author writes, “The decision to establish a family office isn’t solely about wealth level, although economics are a factor.” A family with three companies, rental property in two states, a blended household and a child who wants to take over the business has more to coordinate than a family with a larger single investment account.
A useful rule of thumb is to count moving parts. How many entities exist? How many advisers? How many states? How many people will need to make decisions together one day? A long answer to those questions points toward coordination, whatever the net worth.
What would going without cost?
This is the question that turns an abstract idea into a budget line. The book is blunt about it. It says families should ask “not whether they can afford coordination, but whether they can afford to operate without it”, which is a fair summary of the whole case.
Consider the example Villarrubia gives of advisers working apart. In his telling, “The estate attorney might structure a generation-skipping trust that conflicts with the family’s planned liquidity event.” Neither adviser did anything wrong by their own standard. The cost came from the missing conversation, and a missing conversation is the kind of expense that never appears on an invoice until it is too late.
What is the smallest version that would work?
Often it is not an office at all. The book acknowledges the point: “Not every family requires a full-service family office.” A lighter arrangement might include a lead attorney who coordinates the others, a standing meeting with all advisers each quarter, a one-page map of entities and accounts, and a named person responsible for keeping it current.
Starting small has a second advantage. It teaches the family what it actually needs. A household that has run a coordinated quarterly meeting for a year will know much better whether to add staff and systems than one that is guessing.
What does a family do after the six questions?
Write down the answers. Then take them to an attorney who works with business owners and ask two further things. First, which of the problems come first and which can wait? Second, who among the current advisers is willing to work as part of a team, and who is not?
That second question matters because a coordinated arrangement depends on people who are willing to share information and credit. The book makes a point about it elsewhere, saying a good attorney should see the accountant and the financial adviser as partners and not rivals. If one of the professionals will not cooperate, the family has learned something important.
How big is the transfer ahead?
Large enough that more families will face these questions. Cerulli Associates expects $124 trillion to pass between U.S. generations through 2048, with $105 trillion going to heirs and $18 trillion to charity. Much of that will move through businesses, property and trusts that families built over a lifetime.
The families that handle it well will not necessarily be the richest. They will be the ones who knew what they had, who was responsible for it and what they wanted it to do.
Common questions
Is a family office only for the very rich? No. The book treats it as a tool for any family whose affairs have grown complex enough to need coordination.
Does it replace my lawyer or accountant? No. It organizes them and gives them a shared agenda.
What should I do first? Make a one-page list of your entities, accounts, documents and advisers, and bring it to a meeting where the advisers sit together.
Sources
- NAPA-Net, Wealth Transfers Expected to Hit $124 Trillion Through 2048 (reporting Cerulli)
- Federal Reserve Board, press release on the 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances
- U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy, Frequently Asked Questions About Small Businesses 2026
About the author. Dr. Tamara Patzer is a publisher and former newspaper editor. She was on the staff of The Charlotte Sun when it was named a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for its Hurricane Charley coverage.
About the source. Todd M. Villarrubia is an attorney with an LL.M. in Taxation and a Juris Doctorate. He is an Accredited Estate Planner, a Board Certified Expert in Estate Planning and Administration, and a Fiduciary Investment Advisor Representative. He is the author of Entrepreneurial B.E.A.S.T. Mode™. Wealth Planning Law Group, 101 W. Robert E. Lee Blvd., Ste 404, New Orleans, LA 70124. Phone: 504-982-8207; email: todd@lawealthplan.com; website: https://lawealthplan.com/?utm_source=newsanchored&utm_medium=us-reporter&utm_campaign=family-office
Disclaimer: Sponsored feature written on behalf of Todd M. Villarrubia. This article is general information, not legal or tax advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Results vary.
