Family Offices

Freeman offers sophisticated legal counsel to high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth families, including business structuring, transactional representation, and tax planning that is built on deep personal relationships and trust.

• Freeman’s legal team counsels family offices, providing a holistic approach and innovative solutions to their unique challenges.
• Freeman has been ranked by U.S. News and World Reports as a “Tier 1” law firm for tax law. Our attorneys have been recognized nationally and internationally, including being named to U.S. News and World Report’s Best Lawyers in America list, Super Lawyers, and recognized by Chambers & Partners as among the leading attorneys in the United States. Nearly one-third of our attorneys serve as tax law professors at tier-one law schools.
• Our attorneys assist clients with sophisticated tax and estate planning strategies, acquisitions and dispositions, asset protection, private securities offerings and investments, private equity and venture funds, charitable planning, and litigation.

Family office structures continue to grow, offering ultra-high-net-worth individuals an integrated approach to invest and grow wealth—and a legacy. With assets now exceeding trillions of dollars, family offices and private family capital represent a significant financial resource, exceeding private equity and venture capital combined.

At Freeman Law, we cater to the unique needs of family offices in the United States and globally. We provide comprehensive services tailored to each clients’ distinct objectives.

A Unique Approach Built on Trust and Relationships

Everything that we do begins from a deep commitment to trust and confidence.  We value relationships.  And we seek to build a legacy for our family office clients.

We aim to provide top-tier services through a lean and focused model, thorough diligence and execution—and hyper responsivity.  Our values include an institutional commitment to creativity and value creation. We maintain a boutique model by design.  And we are nimble and adaptive to change, values increasingly in demand in a fast-changing economy and evolving legal landscape.

At the most practical level, our clients know that our default answer will never be a reflexive, “no.”  Instead, we commit to exhausting the potential avenues to get the job done.  We start from the premise that anything is possible; and we work to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

Freeman Law’s Family Office Services

At Freeman Law, we take great pride in providing family offices with personalized, tailored legal counsel from legal professionals who understand their businesses and objectives inside and out.  Whether virtual, multi-family, or a single-family office, the family office exists to steward its family investments and comprehensively serve its clients’ unique goals.

Our lawyers work with a wide range of clients, including high-net-worth families and multi-family offices with considerable assets and liquidity.  Our family office team is staffed with highly credentialed attorneys, including dual attorney-CPAs, who listen to our family office partners, building trust and fostering insight and institutional knowledge.

Freeman assists family offices with an array of legal and tax services, including:

Tax Planning for Family Offices

Tax planning—whether income tax or gift-and-estate planning—is a core need for virtually every family office. Tax, estate planning, investment and philanthropic concerns drive the overall objective of stewarding the family’s investments. We offer state-of-the-art tax advice, providing particular insights with respect to partnership tax issues, entity and trust structures, private funds and real estate investments. We offer family offices an array of tax- and investment-related strategies and individualized planning, including:

Our attorneys bring big-firm tax talent, think-tank intellectual capacity, as well as a team-focused attitude to every representation. Our commitment to providing our clients with dedicated, world-class tax and legal service has garnered national and international recognition and has evolved from a unique collaborative team of attorneys:

• Freeman has been ranked by U.S. News and World Reports as a “Tier 1” law firm for tax law.
• We have a depth of tax knowledge. Our tax attorneys include former IRS trial attorneys, former clerks to the Chief Judge of the United States Tax Court, tax law professors, dual-credentialed CPAs, and attorneys with advanced LL.M. tax degrees from the most prestigious tax programs in the nation.
• One-third of our attorneys serve as law professors at tier one law schools, teaching tax law.

Forging a Solid Foundation with Tax-Efficient Structuring

At Freeman, we work with clients to lay the foundation for future growth. We help our clients identify and evaluate legal risks, increasing their confidence and ability to move forward in a bold fashion.
We help clients structure their business operations, working to achieve their goals through:

Our tax-focused attorneys provide unique insight with respect to entity structures, focusing on a holistic structure designed to achieve overlapping goals. We seek to minimize tax exposure at every step of the structuring process.

Transactional Negotiations

Freeman serves as trusted counsel to family office clients, providing sophisticated transactional counsel—both domestic and international.  We are hyper focused; responsive; and battle-tested—client-focused problem solvers, steeped in a substantive knowledgebase gained from years of experience in the trenches.

We feature tax and accounting professionals with unique insight and experience providing legal, business, and accounting counsel.  We assist family office clients across a spectrum of legal issues, including:

We help family office clients navigate mergers and acquisitions, from recapitalizations and exit transactions, debt financing, and management equity.  And we stand ready to steer fund formation and management, acquisitions, sales, and dispositions.

Ultimately, we join our clients in the trenches, navigating and evaluating risks, negotiating with intention, and recognizing that transactions are not zero-sum propositions—synergies and win-wins lie at the heart of getting to “yes.

Real Estate

Real estate transactions are a central component for many family offices. Freeman provides strategic legal counsel, helping family offices capitalize on a dynamic real estate market, tax incentives, and other strategic goals.

Our real estate services include, but are not limited to:

Real estate transactions often require sophisticated tax consideration and skillful planning. Our tax counsel provide clients with sophisticated real estate tax planning and tax strategies, including:

We also handle all stages of real estate litigation in cases of fraud, misrepresentation, bad faith negotiations and efforts, and other real estate contract issues.

Succession and Estate Planning

We provide family offices with succession and estate planning services. The overriding objective of most family offices is the stewardship and preservation of wealth.

Succession and estate planning are critical components of any successful wealth preservation formula. By listening carefully to our client’s objectives and developing tailored strategies, we turn vision into long-term reality.

Philanthropy and Charitable Business

Freeman Law’s attorneys have handled an array of tax and legal issues for a variety of tax-exempt entities.  Family offices often serve to facilitate and carry out philanthropic goals, including gifts, grants, advocacy and impact investing.  Family offices may carry out charitable endeavors through other mechanisms, such as family foundations and donor-advised funds.  Our legal counsel help clients achieve their philanthropic goals in a tax-efficient manner.

Specialty Assets

Family offices may manage a wide range of specialty assets, including real estate, closely-held businesses, and farms and ranches.  These assets require unique attention.  Freeman helps family office clients with the acquisitions, disposition, and management of specialty assets, including achieving tax-planning goals.

Why Choose Freeman Law for Your Family Office

Freeman Law attorneys are knowledgeable and experienced across a broad range of legal and tax issues, providing a holistic approach and innovative solutions to the unique challenges that family offices face. At Freeman, we cater to the unique needs of family offices in the United States and globally, providing comprehensive services tailored to each clients’ distinct objectives.