Family office services
The concept of a Family Office helps ensure a strategic joined-up approach to your legal, asset and wealth management. Our HM Family Office team, together with our strong network of trusted partners, provides a coordinated service that suits you.
Overview
Expert Family Office Services in Scotland
We know from our experience of working with high net-worth individuals, entrepreneurs, and family businesses that not only creating wealth but sharing and maintaining it through the generations is a key concern.
Whether you are a multi-generational family-owned business or an entrepreneur who has exited a substantial business, you face distinct challenges.
Careful management of both business and personal affairs is important to ensuring the long-term growth and protection of the capital and wealth that has been created.
In order to balance these priorities, we understand that it is important to have all your advisors working in sync.
What is a Family Office?
As your business and family grow, management of your affairs can become all-consuming.
The concept of a Family Office, in part, is meant to relieve some of this pressure and ensure a strategic joined-up approach to your legal, asset and wealth management.
Our HM Family Office offering allows us, together with our strong network of trusted partners, to provide a coordinated service that suits you.
Key contacts
Services
Key Family Office services
As no family is the same, we understand that neither is any family office. We always aim to work in partnership with you and any of your existing external advisors to provide a tailored offering to meet your family goals.
Private client – wills, trusts & executries
Overview
When the value of your assets grows and you are considering succession, one of the most important things you can do is put in place a Will. A well-drafted Will can safeguard young or vulnerable family members, while also ensuring your business achieves maximum business and/or agricultural property reliefs.
Careful estate planning is also vital so as to avoid inheritance tax and residential care costs. Whether it is simply using government allowances, setting up a trust or working with colleagues to put in place a corporate structure, the advice is tailored to each client’s specific circumstances.
With a number of STEP qualified solicitors, the team will regularly prepare charitable, personal injury, pension or other bespoke Trust Deeds and run the day to day trust administration, building strong relationships with families over many generations.
At the end of life, our private client team deal with the administration of a wide range of executries, often with complex and multi-jurisdictional technical issues.
They can also prepare Powers of Attorney, administer Guardianship Orders and advise very fully on caring for the elderly.
Key services
- Making and updating Wills
- Succession and Inheritance tax planning
- Maximising Business and Agricultural property relief
- Trusts and ongoing administration
- Executry administration
- Powers of Attorneys and Guardianship Orders
- Caring for the elderly and minimising care costs
Corporate services & family governance
Overview
We offer a full range of corporate services and have particular experience in advising family-owned and owner-managed businesses. We believe that getting to know your business is key to achieving your immediate and long-term strategic goals – whether that is succession planning, creating a family investment company or putting in place a family charter.
Key services
• Company administration
• Family investment companies limited & general partnerships
• Family constitution & governance
• Succession planning
• Incorporation & registration of on-shore companies
• Family charters
Land & Property
Overview
Our property team is among the largest in Scotland and offers an extensive range of services, including:
- Commercial, residential and estates
- Land acquisitions & disposals
- Management including agricultural tenancies
- Estate planning & asset protection
- Lease of domestic properties
- Transfer of title to property
- Purchase & sale
- Re-mortgaging
Residential property
Overview
Personal tax
Overview
We can provide services in compliance matters and advisory work in relation to:
• Income tax
• Capital gains tax
• Inheritance tax
• Trust & executory taxation
• Estate taxation
Family
Overview
Our award-winning family law team consists of many accredited specialists with experience on a full range of family law matters. The team are able to offer different approaches towards resolution of family law matters, including litigation, negotiation, collaborative practice and mediation.
Key Services
- Separation
- Divorce
- civil
- Dissolution of Civil Partnership
- Cohabitation Agreements
- Pre and Post Nuptial Agreements
- Adoption
- Surrogacy and Parentage Agreements
- Resolution of Residence and Child Law Matters
Charities
Overview
We provide specialist legal, regulatory and commercial advice, ensuring that our clients are able to meet their charitable or social objectives whilst also complying with all of their obligations. We can provide specialist advice in relation to charities, from choosing a corporate structure, governance issues to trustee duties.
Key Services
• Creation & merger of charities
• Variation of purposes
• Trustees’ powers & duties
• Advising on relationships with regulatory bodies such as HMRC, Office of Scottish Charity Regulator, Companies House etc.
The HM Network
Overview
At Harper Macleod our wealth experience has led to us developing a specialist network to assist with your further Family Office needs. Our network includes experts in the following areas:
- Asset Management
- International advisory
- Financial advice and investment
- Pensions
- Retirement planning
- Private banking
- Wealth Management
If you wish to find out more about these services or would like us to refer you to our network please get in touch.
Work
Examples of our work
Case study 1
Overview
We have worked over a number of years with a successful business family who have built a retail group with a footprint throughout the UK and internationally.
Ownership of the main trading group is spread between a number of family trusts which has required us to provide advice and assistance on various aspects of ‘trustees’ duties’ and governance.
In deciding to diversify the family wealth as a protectionist measure, the second and third generation of the family and their other family office advisers have worked with us on numerous matters to structure, acquire, sell and restructure their secondary business interests throughout the UK. This has involved the use of Family Investment Companies as part of the management of wealth through the generations.
Our network of connections through our offices have helped the client to identify suitable contractors for projects and to use our local intelligence to bring information to our client which has been of use in determining the correct approach to take on particular deals.
The breadth of our team has meant that lawyers in our corporate, banking, property, construction, employment and personal legal services have worked with our client across their diverse and increasing portfolio of business interests in the rural, manufacturing, food and drink, and renewables sectors.
Case study 2
Overview
We have worked over a number of years with a successful business family who have built a retail group with a footprint throughout the UK and internationally.
Ownership of the main trading group is spread between a number of family trusts which has required us to provide advice and assistance on various aspects of ‘trustees’ duties’ and governance.
In deciding to diversify the family wealth as a protectionist measure, the second and third generation of the family and their other family office advisers have worked with us on numerous matters to structure, acquire, sell and restructure their secondary business interests throughout the UK. This has involved the use of Family Investment Companies as part of the management of wealth through the generations.
Our network of connections through our offices have helped the client to identify suitable contractors for projects and to use our local intelligence to bring information to our client which has been of use in determining the correct approach to take on particular deals.
The breadth of our team has meant that lawyers in our corporate, banking, property, construction, employment and personal legal services have worked with our client across their diverse and increasing portfolio of business interests in the rural, manufacturing, food and drink, and renewables sectors.
Case study 3
Overview
We have worked over a number of years with a successful business family who have built a retail group with a footprint throughout the UK and internationally.
Ownership of the main trading group is spread between a number of family trusts which has required us to provide advice and assistance on various aspects of ‘trustees’ duties’ and governance.
In deciding to diversify the family wealth as a protectionist measure, the second and third generation of the family and their other family office advisers have worked with us on numerous matters to structure, acquire, sell and restructure their secondary business interests throughout the UK. This has involved the use of Family Investment Companies as part of the management of wealth through the generations.
Our network of connections through our offices have helped the client to identify suitable contractors for projects and to use our local intelligence to bring information to our client which has been of use in determining the correct approach to take on particular deals.
The breadth of our team has meant that lawyers in our corporate, banking, property, construction, employment and personal legal services have worked with our client across their diverse and increasing portfolio of business interests in the rural, manufacturing, food and drink, and renewables sectors.
Case study 4
Overview
We have worked over a number of years with a successful business family who have built a retail group with a footprint throughout the UK and internationally.
Ownership of the main trading group is spread between a number of family trusts which has required us to provide advice and assistance on various aspects of ‘trustees’ duties’ and governance.
In deciding to diversify the family wealth as a protectionist measure, the second and third generation of the family and their other family office advisers have worked with us on numerous matters to structure, acquire, sell and restructure their secondary business interests throughout the UK. This has involved the use of Family Investment Companies as part of the management of wealth through the generations.
Our network of connections through our offices have helped the client to identify suitable contractors for projects and to use our local intelligence to bring information to our client which has been of use in determining the correct approach to take on particular deals.
The breadth of our team has meant that lawyers in our corporate, banking, property, construction, employment and personal legal services have worked with our client across their diverse and increasing portfolio of business interests in the rural, manufacturing, food and drink, and renewables sectors.
Case study 4
Overview
We have worked over a number of years with a successful business family who have built a retail group with a footprint throughout the UK and internationally.
Ownership of the main trading group is spread between a number of family trusts which has required us to provide advice and assistance on various aspects of ‘trustees’ duties’ and governance.
In deciding to diversify the family wealth as a protectionist measure, the second and third generation of the family and their other family office advisers have worked with us on numerous matters to structure, acquire, sell and restructure their secondary business interests throughout the UK. This has involved the use of Family Investment Companies as part of the management of wealth through the generations.
Our network of connections through our offices have helped the client to identify suitable contractors for projects and to use our local intelligence to bring information to our client which has been of use in determining the correct approach to take on particular deals.
The breadth of our team has meant that lawyers in our corporate, banking, property, construction, employment and personal legal services have worked with our client across their diverse and increasing portfolio of business interests in the rural, manufacturing, food and drink, and renewables sectors.
Case study 5
Overview
We have worked with the Executors and Trustees of an estate of a successful commercial property developer with a diverse portfolio of assets, including trading businesses, in the UK and mainland Europe.
Our full-service offering has enabled us to undertake the administration of the large and diverse estate of the deceased, advise on tax, manage the ongoing trading businesses and balance these with the dynamics of the deceased’s family.
The breadth of our legal services has meant that lawyers in our corporate, banking, property, employment and personal legal teams have worked with our client. Our use our network of connections and local intelligence has also allowed us to bring information to our client which has been of use in determining the best approach in dealing with tax considerations and managing the various businesses.
This work has also involved planning for the deceased’s family, structuring of business assets, and tax and trust planning.
CONTACT US
Call us for free on 0330 159 5555 or complete our online form below to submit your enquiry or arrange a call back.