Family Office Services in Utah: What’s Included, Who They Fit, and What to Ask

TL;DR

Family office services coordinate investments, tax, estate and administration; they fit families with recurring complexity, who should compare written scope, authority and costs.

What do family office services usually include?

Family office services combine financial oversight with coordination across the people and tasks that affect a family’s wealth. A family may already have an investment adviser, CPA, attorney, trustee, insurance professional, and bookkeeper. The missing part is often not another specialist. It is someone responsible for keeping decisions, documents, and deadlines connected.

Private Advisory offers family office services from its Lehi, Utah, and Redmond, Washington, offices, subject to a minimum investable-asset requirement. Its offering includes investment management, financial planning and coordination with independent tax and legal professionals. Concierge assistance may be available to some clients at Private Advisory’s discretion.

The useful difference from investment-only advice is the mandate: the written list of work the provider owns, coordinates, monitors, or leaves to someone else.

An outsourced or multi-family office serves several families through a shared professional organization. That differs from a single-family office, which one family creates and operates for itself. The name alone does not establish the provider’s legal structure, regulatory status, or authority.

The scope offered by a provider may cover several areas:

The table describes possible functions across providers; it does not list services included in a Private Advisory engagement.

Ask the provider to mark every requested task as included, available at its discretion, separately charged, or outside the engagement. That single exercise exposes more than a broad service label does.

How is a family office different from investment-only advice?

Investment advice manages investment decisions; a family office also organizes the decisions and responsibilities surrounding the investments.

An investment adviser may recommend how to divide a portfolio among stocks, bonds and other investments, manage accounts, and provide financial planning. A family office mandate may also connect that portfolio to a business sale, trust distribution, charitable commitment, tax estimate, family meeting, or large cash need.

The coordination problem is easy to miss. A technically sound investment decision can still create trouble if the tax professional learns about it after year-end or the trustee lacks enough cash for a scheduled distribution. The family office’s value is therefore not simply a longer service list. It is a process that puts each specialist’s work into the same decision calendar.

Who is a good fit for family office services in Utah?

A family office may fit when coordination failures have become more costly or time-consuming than the work of managing investments alone. Net worth matters to provider eligibility, but complexity is the stronger practical test.

Common signs include:

• Family wealth is spread across investment accounts, businesses, real estate, trusts, partnerships, or private investments.
• A founder or business owner is preparing for a sale, succession, or transfer to the next generation.
• Several family members share assets but lack clear decision rules.
• The family has recurring gifts, charitable commitments, trust distributions, or entity filings.
• A relative or executive has become the unpaid coordinator for every adviser and deadline.
• Tax, estate, investment, and cash-flow decisions regularly affect one another.
• The family wants consolidated reporting or help keeping records and open tasks current.

A simpler arrangement may fit when the main need is portfolio management and occasional planning. Adding a broad family office mandate creates little value if the family has few recurring decisions, clear ownership of every task, and no need for administrative support.

The public service page does not state the minimum amount or define the asset test. Ask which assets count, whether eligibility is measured by household or entity, and whether assets held in trusts, retirement accounts, private companies, or at another custodian qualify.

Why does family governance matter before services are delegated?

Family governance determines who may decide, who must be consulted, and how the next generation participates.

Governance need not begin with a formal family constitution. It can start with a written rule for approving a major purchase, a quarterly family meeting, or a record of decisions about a shared trust or business. Without those rules, a provider may coordinate information while the family still stalls over authority.

A workable governance file should answer five questions:

1. Who makes the final decision?
2. Who provides financial, tax, or legal advice?
3. Who carries out the approved action?
4. Who monitors the deadline and confirms completion?
5. What event requires a family meeting or escalation?

These rules clarify the difference between access to information and authority to act. A child can receive suitable information without gaining authority over a trust. A trustee can retain legal responsibility while an adviser organizes the reporting calendar. Coordination should clarify authority, not blur it.

Where do tax and legal responsibilities begin and end?

The signed engagement letters identify who provides tax advice, prepares filings and drafts legal documents. A family office can coordinate that work with the separately engaged tax and legal professionals.

Private Advisory provides financial planning and tax-strategy coordination. Independent certified public accountants (CPAs) and attorneys perform tax and legal services under separate engagements. Private Advisory itself is neither an attorney nor an accountant.

The distinction matters because “tax support” can describe very different work:

• An adviser may model the financial effect of a contemplated gift.
• A CPA determines tax treatment and prepares any required return.
• An attorney advises on the legal structure and drafts trust or transfer documents.
• An executor, trustee, or entity manager may retain responsibility for approval and filing.
• A family office coordinator keeps the parties working from the same dates and assumptions.

Private Advisory’s biography for Rachel Paxman, CPA provides a concrete example: it identifies her as an independent partner and says any accounting or tax services she provides are outside Private Advisory and require a separate engagement. A prospective client should ask whether the same arrangement applies to each outside professional involved.

For any proposed gift, estate administration or family-entity transaction, ask the separately engaged CPA to identify the applicable federal and Utah filings and deadlines. Record who prepares, approves, submits and pays each item. Keep the CPA’s written instructions with the task record so the family can check completion.

How can a family define the right mandate before interviewing providers?

Gather 12 months of meeting notes, tax requests, bills, trust notices, entity filings, insurance reviews, and major purchase decisions. Add known events for the next two years, such as a business sale, retirement, large gift, trust distribution, or estate-plan update.

Build a responsibility matrix with these fields:

How do you choose a family office provider step by step?

Use the completed matrix to compare proposals in this order.

1. Check the inventory. Confirm that the matrix includes all recurring tasks and upcoming events. Mark any task with no current owner.
2. Prioritize the gaps. Distinguish urgent missing responsibilities from services that would simply be convenient. Agree which gaps a new engagement must address.
3. Interview providers against the same matrix. Ask each firm to identify included work, outside professionals and tasks it would not accept. You should be able to compare written responses row by row.
4. Compare agreements and disclosures. Match the proposed scope to costs, authority, conflicts and any separate professional engagements. Resolve differences between the interview and the written terms before selecting a firm.
5. Confirm the handover plan. Set a start date and identify who owns every open task during the change. Choose only when each task has an owner, a clear limit on authority, a deadline and a place to record completion.

What would the decision look like for a Utah family?

A hypothetical Utah family with a portfolio, family partnership, trusts, and planned gifts would likely need coordination before it needs more investment products.

Suppose the family’s adviser manages its portfolio. Its CPA prepares returns, and its attorney updates estate documents. The family partnership produces Utah-source income, while the parents are considering gifts and want adult children involved in future decisions.

Investment-only advice could remain sufficient if one family member reliably manages every meeting, document request, approval, and deadline. A broader family office mandate becomes more useful when that work is being missed, duplicated, or pushed onto someone who lacks the time or authority to do it.

The written mandate might assign:

• Investment management and cash-flow modeling to the investment adviser.
• Tax conclusions and return preparation to the separately engaged CPA.
• Trust drafting and legal advice to the separately engaged attorney.
• Final gift decisions to the parents.
• Partnership decisions to the authorized manager.
• Calendars, meeting preparation, document collection, and open-item tracking to the family office coordinator.

The family can now compare a provider’s proposal against specific gaps in its current arrangements.

What should you ask a Utah family office provider?

Compare costs, incentives and service continuity with these questions:

1. What costs would we pay beyond the quoted fee, including outside-professional and investment expenses?
2. What conflicts of interest could affect recommendations?
3. Which services are discretionary or subject to separate charges?
4. Who provides backup when our main contact is unavailable?
5. Can we retain our existing CPA, attorney and other professionals?
6. What happens to service scope and fees when our circumstances change?

The SEC’s Investor.gov guidance on selecting an investment adviser also recommends comparing needed services with actual capabilities, reviewing limitations and costs, and asking about compensation and conflicts.

Which documents should you review before signing?

Request the agreement, regulatory disclosures and supporting records before signing:

• The proposed service agreement and detailed scope of work
• A fee schedule covering advisory, administrative, outside-professional, custody, transaction, and product costs
• The provider’s current Form CRS, its short relationship summary
• The provider’s current Form ADV Part 2 brochure, the narrative section of its regulatory filing describing practices, fees and conflicts
• Professional biographies for the people assigned to the relationship
• Sample reports, calendars, meeting agendas, and open-item logs
• Written authority and approval procedures
• Data-sharing, record-retention, and privacy procedures
• Outside CPA, attorney, or administrative engagement letters
• Termination and record-transfer terms

The SEC explains that Form CRS covers services, fees, conflicts, standards of conduct, and conversation starters in its Investor Bulletin on relationship summaries.

Investor.gov explains how to find current filings. Search both the firm and the individual professional, taking care to match the exact legal name and identifying number.

Private Advisory Group LLC, doing business as Private Advisory, is an investment adviser registered with the SEC under CRD 170043. Registration does not imply a particular level of skill or training.

Review Private Advisory Form CRS and use Private Advisory Form ADV and Part 2 brochure via IAPD to access its current filings for fees, conflicts, services, and other disclosures.

FAQ

What payment controls should I ask a family office about?

Ask who requests, approves and releases payments, how unusual instructions are verified, and who reviews records. Before delegating any work to Private Advisory, confirm its authority in the agreement; coordination alone does not authorize moving money.

How can a family preserve its records if it changes providers?

Get export formats, retention periods and post-termination access terms in writing. For a Private Advisory relationship involving independent tax or legal professionals, identify which records each provider holds and request copies from the appropriate source.

What if only some family members should see financial information?

Set permissions separately for viewing information and making decisions. Explain those limits when discussing Private Advisory’s coordination role, and have the relevant trustee or legal adviser confirm who can authorize access to trust or entity records.

What is the next step?

Families considering Private Advisory’s Lehi office can start a fit conversation with their decision list, current adviser roster, and responsibility matrix in hand.

About Private Advisory

Private Advisory is a wealth management firm serving founders, business owners, executives and families across the western United States. The team combines financial planning and investment management to help clients navigate business sales, equity compensation, retirement and the transfer of wealth across generations. Its work connects investment decisions with cash-flow needs and family priorities, while coordinating with clients’ independent tax and legal professionals. Private Advisory also offers family office services for eligible clients and workplace retirement consulting for employers.

This is not tax or legal advice. Consult your own tax and legal professionals.