Coordinating Advice Across Borders

Families live across borders. Professional advisers usually do not.

Members of the same family may live in different countries. Their businesses, homes, investments, trusts, foundations, art collections and other assets may be spread across several jurisdictions. A decision taken in one country can therefore have legal, tax, financial and personal consequences in several others.

International families often receive advice from several different professionals. A lawyer considers the law of one jurisdiction. A tax adviser looks at the relevant tax system. Accountants, trustees, bankers, investment advisers and family-office professionals each approach the matter from their own area of expertise.

Each adviser may provide an excellent part of the answer. The difficulty is that the family itself is frequently left to bring all those separate answers together.

Advice that works well in one country may create an unexpected problem in another. Two advisers may proceed from different assumptions without realising it. Important questions may fall between professional disciplines because each adviser reasonably believes that someone else is dealing with them.

No More Worries can act as the central point connecting the family with the countries, disciplines and professionals involved.

We help identify the questions that really need to be answered and determine which expertise is required. Where additional advisers are needed, we help find the right individual professionals, taking account not only of their technical expertise but also of their judgement, independence, cultural understanding and ability to work with the family and its other advisers.

We can help formulate and coordinate their assignments, ensure that they receive the relevant information and keep the different strands of their work connected. Once their advice has been received, we help the family understand the alternatives, identify possible gaps or contradictions and decide on a coherent and practical way forward.

No More Worries does not seek to replace good existing advisers. Nor do we pretend that one person can provide every specialist answer in every country. Detailed technical advice should be given by properly qualified professionals with the necessary expertise and local knowledge.

The family remains free to communicate directly with every adviser involved. Our role is not to stand between the family and its professionals, but to help them work together effectively and to prevent the family from having to become the project manager of its own legal, tax and personal affairs.

Our international reach is supported by relationships developed over many decades. An important cornerstone of that network is Family Matters Online, the independent charitable initiative founded by Philip van Hilten, who continues to serve as its editor. Its Family Team brings together experienced and independent professionals from countries throughout the world.

These relationships provide something more valuable than a directory of international contacts. They form a living network of people whose professional qualities, personal judgement and ability to cooperate are known.

The family should receive one understandable and workable solution — not a collection of separate national opinions.