For over 100 years our lawyers have been serving the needs of families. Although the current vernacular used is “private client,” we still refer to our personal clients as families. They are entrepreneurs, active and retired executives, family holding companies, and family offices.
Evans Petree advises families on most every aspect of their personal and business needs. Wealthy families face many common issues daily, yet each is unique and requires highly individualized services. After more than a century of observing and listening to requests from hundreds of multi-generational families, our professionals have developed a distinct perspective on how to advise them.
Evans Petree is accustomed to a team advisory approach with our family clients. Frequent interaction with other third-party advisors and internal family management help deliver efficient, comprehensive service to each client. Often we are called upon to assist families in identification and recruitment of prospective management and other advisors. Families often request that we initiate dialogue with other families in the course of private equity, merchant banking and family office activities.
The lawyers at Evans Petree maintain an active U.S. and offshore network of families as well as professionals in investment banking, law, accounting, wealth management, and virtually every other field of endeavor a family may need to access.
Illustrative mandates
- Assist a UK-based multi-family office in the globalization of its platform
- Identify strategic partners for a U.S. family in non-U.S. real estate holdings
- Support a U.S. family seeking to expose potential misappropriation in a European operation
- Counsel a closely held Swiss financial services firm in the reorganization of its international operations
- Assist a Cayman Islands family business owner in the recapitalization of his company; followed by a gift and installment sale of non-voting shares to a multi-generation grantor trust
Typical Family Services
- Family governance and succession matters
- Advice regarding new and ongoing family office operations
- U.S. domestic and international tax issues
- Evaluation of third-party advisers – e.g. specialists in law, accounting, tax, wealth management, investment bankers and others
- Liaison to other families and family office groups
- Corporate and family office management recruiting support
- Devise and implement wealth transfer techniques
- Business succession, including family vs. management issues
- Foundation and trust management advice
- Liquid and illiquid asset diversification techniques
- Family dispute resolution and family preservation matters
- Asset protection through pre- and postnuptial agreements
- Administration of complex estates and trusts
- Executive compensation, tax, and estate planning for corporate executives
Legal needs addressed by this practice area:
- Business and commercial transactions
- Mergers and acquisitions
- Private placements of securities
- Alternative strategies asset managers
- Executive compensation and benefits (privately-held companies)
- Early stage venture capital transactions
- Middle market private equity transactions
- Private client services
- Single and multi-family offices
- Family owned and controlled businesses
