How to run a family council: purpose, membership and agenda

A family council is the body through which the family, as distinct from the board of the operating business or the family office, makes decisions about family matters: shared values, education of the next generation, family employment policy, philanthropy, conflict resolution and who speaks for the family to the board. It does not manage investments and it does not run the office. Around a third of families with a family office have one. Ocorian's 2026 survey of family offices found 35% with a family council, the same proportion that Family Business Magazine found among 320 enterprising families in 2020. Running one well comes down to a clear remit, representative membership, a standing agenda and a documented relationship to the other governing bodies.

What a council is for

The council exists to give the family one voice. Without it, the board and the office hear from whichever family member is loudest or closest, and heirs who are not employed in the business have no forum at all. The council's typical remit is to steward the family's constitution or charter, to oversee education and engagement of the next generation, to set policy on family employment and on use of family assets, to direct family philanthropy or oversee those who do, and to nominate family representatives to the board.

The documents that anchor this work are less common than the councils themselves. PwC's 2023 Global Family Business Survey found 30% of family businesses had a family constitution, 50% had a shareholders' agreement and 19% had a formal conflict-resolution mechanism. J.P. Morgan's 2026 Global Family Office Report found 66% of business-owning families had a formal constitution or written bylaws, against about 50% of families without an operating business, and that 41% of business-owning families ranked internal conflict among their top three risks. The council is usually the body that writes and revises these documents. How a constitution differs from a shareholders' agreement is covered in family constitution versus shareholders' agreement.

Membership

Small families often make every adult a member. Larger families elect representatives by branch and by generation, which keeps the council to a working size and gives the next generation seats of its own. Common design choices include a minimum age for membership, often aligned with the age at which the family begins to share information, fixed terms with staggered rotation, a chair elected by the council rather than appointed by the principal, and observer seats for younger members. Bank of America's 2025 Family Office Study found that only 19% of offices used term limits in their governance structures, which suggests rotation is the exception. UBS's 2026 report found offices most commonly see 18 to 29 as the age to start preparing heirs and 30 to 39 as the age for active engagement, which gives a rough guide to when observer and voting seats make sense.

Spouses are the recurring question. Some families include them fully, some give them a voice without a vote, and some exclude them. What matters is that the rule is written down before it is tested.

A working agenda

A council that meets without a standing agenda drifts into either social gathering or grievance session. A typical annual cycle covers the following.

Minutes, a decision log and a short annual report to the wider family make the council accountable and give heirs a written history of why things are the way they are.

Relationship to the board and the office

The council owns family matters; the board owns the business or the investment entity; the office executes. The dividing lines need to be explicit. The council sets the values and constraints the investment policy must respect; approving investments belongs to the board or investment committee. The council writes the family employment policy; hiring office staff belongs to the office. UBS's 2026 data shows that 49% of offices have a governance framework with a board overseeing the office's work and 60% have an investment committee; Ocorian found 65% with an investment committee including independent members and 60% with a next-generation advisory board. A council that duplicates these bodies creates conflict; one that feeds them, through nominated representatives and written policy, reduces it. The mechanics of allocating authority between the three are set out in family office decision rights.

Prevalence and what it suggests

Bank of America found that 90% of family offices had some governance structure in 2025, but that 33% of offices under ten years old named governance as their primary challenge and 40% of all offices said they would benefit from outside help with it. Councils remain a minority structure. Where they work, the common features are the same: a written remit, representative membership, a standing agenda and a recorded relationship to the board and the office.