A knowledgeable, skilled and trusted team can help you craft a strategy for navigating considerable wealth and achieve your varied family goals.
Considerable wealth affords your family tremendous opportunities but also introduces new complexities. Being purposeful about sustaining and growing your wealth and values across generations takes a knowledgeable, skilled and trusted team.
A team of skilled professionals helping you navigate the complexities of wealth
Sustaining wealth over generations is not likely to succeed if left to chance. Rather, it requires dedicated effort and a thoughtful, tailored approach. Our skilled professionals can work with you on crafting a strategy designed to help achieve your varied (and occasionally conflicting) family goals. They can also help give family members the insights and skills to help them make informed decisions.
We strive to empower ultra-high-net-worth families to define the purpose of their wealth and to be intentional about wealth’s impact on themselves, their families and their communities — with three complementary teams.
Merrill® Private Wealth Services encompasses three distinct but interdependent groups — all working together, with your Merrill Private Wealth Advisor, to help your family strategize, execute and achieve both your financial and personal aspirations.
Merrill Center for Family Wealth™
With insight gained through our diverse knowledge and years of experience working with other wealthy families, we can help your family navigate the complexities of wealth by defining intent, building skills across generations and implementing family governance practices.
Our work is anchored in customized education, guidance, facilitation and development at individual and group levels — empowering you and your family to define the purpose of your wealth and to be intentional about its impact on individual family members and the greater community, through:
- Educational Programs
- Individual and Family Guidance
- Family Meeting Facilitation
- Rising Generation Skill Development
Strategic Wealth Advisory Group
Whether your goal is to minimize taxes, preserve family assets for future generations, and/or ensure the desired distribution of your assets in a tax-smart manner, our Private Wealth Strategists will work with you on wealth transfer and philanthropic planning strategies that align with your unique needs and objectives.
Our Private Wealth Strategists draw on advanced law or taxation degrees and years of experience working with individuals and families of substantial wealth to provide you with objective insights aimed at aligning financial and legacy strategies with your specific goals, by offering:
- Private Business Solutions
- Advanced Planning Services
- Philanthropic Planning
Family Office Services
From customized expense reporting to tax return preparation to consolidated portfolio reporting, we can provide a level of clarity to help you gain greater control over your wealth.
Our highly credentialed Family Office Services professionals bring valuable scale and flexibility to the challenge of simplifying and managing your family’s boundless and complex financial life and affairs. Working closely with your Private Wealth Advisor, they can offer you:
- Household Accounting Services
- Tax Services
- Custom Financial Reporting
- Consulting & Financial Administration
Connect with a Merrill Private Wealth Advisor.
Frequently asked questions
Financial education and advice empowers individuals to build their preferred future. By building financial literacy, individuals gain the knowledge they need to make informed financial decisions. Learning about topics, such as budgeting, saving, retirement planning, home ownership and generational wealth, allows individuals to make more informed financial decisions.
Creating a wealth management strategy that can help you sustain your wealth for generations to come takes planning. A sustainable wealth strategy is one that brings together investment management, wealth structuring such as trusts, and thoughtful financial and family governance. A sustainable wealth plan is one that you can build by working with a professional wealth management advisor.
Trusts are financial tools that give you specific control over how your wealth is used and protected. You can think of a trust as a container for your assets. When you establish a trust, you work with a lawyer and financial advisors to establish rules on what happens to the assets in your trust, who will manage it, and who the beneficiaries of the trust are.
Trusts are just one part of a larger estate plan. Your estate is the sum total of all your assets that you own after you die. While a trust, or set of trusts, may be part of your estate, they rarely cover the entirety of your estate. Trusts are a powerful tool and can be part of a comprehensive estate plan that you create with the help of your financial and legal advisors.
A family office is a private financial management practice that serves to manage the investments and financial affairs of a single wealthy family (known as a single-family office) or group of families (known as a multi-family office). In general, family offices are run by and for the exclusive benefit of their family clients and offer services that include data aggregation and reporting; comprehensive financial insights; financial oversight and administration; accounting and tax services; family and financial planning and consulting; treasury management and bill payment; and/or customized lending.
In general, there are two types of family office. A single-family office that serves to manage the investments and financial affairs of one wealthy individual or family; or a multi-family office that serves the needs of a small group of individuals and/or families. Many large investment companies, banks and trust companies also offer a wide range of family office services that can be accessed by wealthy individuals and families.
Related Solutions
“Private Wealth Services” is the marketing name for a group of services provided through Merrill Private Wealth Management. The group comprises the Merrill Center for Family Wealth™, the Strategic Wealth Advisory Group and Merrill Family Office Services.
Family Office Services are offered through MLPF&S. In connection with its Family Office Services, Merrill is not acting in the capacity as a broker-dealer, nor as a registered investment adviser. Accordingly, through its Family Office Services, Merrill is not offering, and its clients are not paying for, advice with respect to securities, the purchase or sale of securities, or the valuation thereof, nor do Family Office Services encompass financial planning, discretionary account management, or any other securities-related accounts, products or services.
Merrill offers a broad array of brokerage and investment advisory accounts, products and services through other parts of its business outside of Family Office Services, which are subject to separate agreements, disclosures and fee arrangements, and may be procured by applying or enrolling and contracting through those other business channels. Please contact your Private Wealth Advisor with questions regarding Merrill’s brokerage or investment advisory offerings.
Family Office Services can provide tax advice; however, Merrill, its affiliates and financial advisors do not provide legal, tax or accounting advice. You should consult your legal and/or tax advisors before making any financial decisions.