Family Office Services

Choate partners often serve as our clients’ trustees and executors, providing continuity and stability over many generations. As trustees and executors, we are able to provide personal and attentive service that sets us apart from traditional corporate fiduciaries. We seek regular contact with client families to ensure that our approach continues to meet the needs of the particular family – something not often available to clients working with large corporate banks or trust companies.

Coupled with our technical legal and tax expertise, our high level of responsiveness and personal service distinguishes us from our corporate fiduciary peers.

Our family office services team is comprised of experienced estate planning lawyers to help clients achieve their goals through a combination of two distinct types of planning: core estate planning (such as wills and revocable trusts) and advanced lifetime strategies (such as gifting, GRATs, etc.).

We also provide wider-ranging support, such as advising families through life transitions, providing advice and counsel on business transactions, offering other business or personal advice, and educating and mentoring younger generations. As our clients’ needs evolve, our services evolve with them.

Our colleagues at ChoateIA provide investment management advice to both our partners, in their capacity as trustees for our client families, and directly to our clients. ChoateIA seeks to deliver sustainable and attractive long-term investment results.

With more than $5.9 billion of assets under management (as of Dec. 2022), we provide comprehensive, integrated investment services to help our successful clients manage their assets and plan for the long term. With years of experience in managing investment portfolios, we work with our clients to determine the appropriate strategy for each family member, trust or entity, and then structure a well-diversified investment portfolio based on the risk tolerance unique to each investor.

We use a broad range of investment asset classes to maximize returns consistent with our clients’ risk preferences. Because we are recognized as a top investment advisory team, our advisors have access to the leading investment managers from around the world. We continually monitor these managers’ strategies and performance, and leverage their resources, to sustain competitive overall returns for our clients’ portfolios.

Because we have no proprietary products to sell and receive no hidden commissions, we are totally aligned with our clients’ interests as we help them to accomplish their family goals. Unlike many investment advisors, we are not built with the idea of eventually selling our business; this means that our clients can trust that we will be putting their interests – rather than our own – first for generations to come.

Our family office services team has extensive experience handling the unique distribution, reporting, and planning needs of our clients’ charities. Our team of professionals helps clients navigate the complicated private foundation tax rules, and any other legal and tax issues that arise with respect to a family’s charitable activities.

Our trust advisors coordinate tasks related to the administration of a family’s accounts, including cash management, reporting and recordkeeping, trust administration, gifting, management of special assets, opening and closing of accounts, and the execution of estate planning strategies. Our family office team is uniquely qualified to deliver these services as Choate has been creating and managing trusts for over 100 years. We also have an experienced team for administering deceased clients’ estates, navigating the probate process, and preparing estate tax returns to ensure that clients’ wishes are properly fulfilled.

Our tax department works closely with the rest of our family office services team to provide efficient and accurate tax compliance, and integration of tax planning with our families’ overall plans and objectives. We consider the full range of tax implications in our work, including gifting strategies.