What a wealth manager actually does
A wealth manager — typically a registered investment adviser serving high-net-worth families — manages your investment portfolio and provides financial planning. Most also coordinate with your existing CPA and estate attorney: sharing tax documents, flagging year-end planning opportunities, and staying aligned with your estate plan. Some extend this to insurance review, college planning, and retirement income projections.
What a coordinated wealth manager does not typically do is prepare your tax returns, draft estate documents, or handle household bill pay. Those services live with your other professionals. The wealth manager's job is to connect the dots across them — not to do all the work in-house.
For families with $5M–$30M, a fee-only registered investment adviser in this coordinated role is usually the appropriate fit. The SEC requires registered investment advisers to disclose their fees, services, and any conflicts of interest through Form ADV.1
What a family office adds
A family office — whether multi-family or single-family — goes further than coordination. Depending on the firm, it may include tax return preparation and filing, estate document management, consolidated performance reporting across all accounts and entities, bill pay and household cash management, and formal family governance structures for wealth that spans generations or multiple family branches.
The difference from a coordinated advisor is that a family office brings some or all of these functions in-house rather than managing them through outside professionals you already retain. That integration has real value when the volume and complexity of transactions — trusts, entities, family members, liquidity events — makes coordination across multiple separate firms genuinely difficult to manage.
It also has a cost. The overhead of an integrated team is real whether it's shared across families (multi-family office) or dedicated to yours (single-family office). See the fee structure guide for a breakdown of what each layer typically costs.
The $100M threshold — and why it matters
A dedicated single-family office is generally viable only for families with assets well above $100M. The arithmetic is straightforward: staffing a dedicated CIO, CFO, and support team, plus technology, compliance, and legal overhead, costs several million dollars per year before any investment management begins. At assets below $100M, those fixed costs consume a share of returns that would exceed the cost of working with a coordinated advisor or multi-family office.
Most families with $5M–$30M who say they "want a family office" are better described as wanting family-office-style service: investment management, coordinated planning, a team that knows their whole picture, and someone to call when something happens. A well-run coordinated advisor or multi-family office delivers this without the full overhead of a dedicated team.
See the asset minimum guide for a detailed breakdown of the staffing arithmetic and how complexity factors change the calculus.
Four questions to identify which fits your situation
1. What work needs to get done?
List the recurring responsibilities you want covered: investment oversight, planning, tax strategy, estate coordination, reporting, or something else. Separate what a coordinated advisor can deliver from what would require in-house staffing. If the list is investment management and coordinated planning, a wealth manager is likely sufficient. If it includes in-house tax preparation across multiple entities, consolidated reporting across family members, or bill pay, the case for a family office structure is stronger.
2. How complex is the tax and estate picture?
A single-entity family with one CPA relationship and a straightforward estate plan is well served by coordination. A family with multiple trusts, operating entities, international holdings, or a pending business sale where the tax structure will be complex may benefit from tighter integration between the investment manager and tax function. Even in that case, you can often achieve integration by choosing an advisory firm that has a dedicated tax professional relationship — not necessarily one that employs the CPA in-house.
3. Does the service scope justify the cost?
Obtain proposals from both types of arrangements and compare the total annual cost — advisory fee, investment costs, and any separately billed services — against the specific services you expect to use. A multi-family office that bundles tax preparation into the annual fee can be economical if you have significant complexity. The same bundle can be expensive if you have a simple tax situation. Use the fee comparison tool to model your own assumptions.
4. What does a liquidity event change?
A business sale, inheritance, or equity payout can shift this calculus quickly. A single event may increase complexity enough to warrant a more integrated arrangement — at least temporarily. If you're anticipating a liquidity event, it's worth having a conversation about how your planning needs are likely to change before the event closes, not after. The due diligence question guide includes questions specifically for this transition scenario.
Multi-family office: the middle option
For families whose situation falls between a coordinated advisor and a dedicated family office, multi-family offices occupy a useful middle ground. A well-structured MFO provides a shared team with investment management, tax preparation, estate coordination, and consolidated reporting — integrated, but shared across families to keep the cost below SFO overhead.
The challenge with MFOs is that "multi-family office" is a marketing label, not a regulatory category. Firms use it to describe arrangements that vary widely in how much is actually in-house, what's coordinated, and what's subcontracted. The SFO vs MFO comparison explains what to look for behind the label. When evaluating an MFO, ask for the names and roles of the people who would work with your family and whether each promised service is delivered internally or through a third party.2
When the label matters less than the team
The most important question in any advisory search is not whether a firm calls itself a wealth manager or a family office. It is whether the specific people responsible for your family's work have the expertise, the service scope, and the accountability you need. A firm using the term "family office" without a meaningful in-house capability adds cost without substance. A coordinated advisor with deep expertise in your specific situation — business owners approaching a sale, families managing an inheritance, executives managing equity — may provide a better outcome than a more elaborate structure.
When evaluating any arrangement, request a clear description of who does the work, what is in-house versus coordinated, and how the fee is structured for the services you would actually use. Then compare that against a written proposal from at least one alternative arrangement. The model comparison guide provides a framework for running that comparison systematically.
Sources & further reading
Source pages reviewed October 2026. Content describes general service models; actual services and fees vary by firm and engagement.