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There are few public cases of Family Office problems. They are obviously kept confidential. One however which always gets (usually unwelcome) publicity is the British Royal Family. Whilst part of the State the Royal Family can also be seen as a Family Office. The issues it faces are dealt with successfully by highly trained and experienced people and lots can be learnt from how problems are dealt with. I set out a few of my thoughts below which are my practical learning perspective and not intended to upset anyone!

• Publicity about finances - the Family Office wants no publicity about its finances. It avoids comment on how much income it receives and how much is paid out to family members. 

• Publicity generally - this needs to be carefully controlled and restrained. Historic publicity on TV has generally not helped the family. Keeping the publicity very bland and being associated in a formal way with worthy public bodies and charities is the way to go.

• Problem family members - they are "demoted" and to the extent possible marginalised from the main business of the family. You can see tensions within the family over this but the advisers clearly want things to go only one way.

• Litigation - you will see from a recent high profile settlement that you do not go to court - instead you settle even if expensive and other members of the family have to help with the cashflow. It does not matter that the member involved wants to keep litigating and thinks he can win - you still settle and move on.

• Numbers - when the number of members in the family get too large you prune it back even if some family members have to go.

• Succession - this goes against usual wisdom of transferring leadership early on so that the new leader is not already well past pensionable age. We will have to wait and see whether this ends up being a success for the Royal Family. 

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