Estates · Family Offices · Trust Funds
Kingsley Oakridge Associates manages estates, family offices and trust funds, and stands between our clients and anyone who would erode what they have built — tax authorities, litigants, counterparties and, where necessary, their own heirs.
The Firm
Wealth held privately is rarely simple. It sits across funds, operating companies, trusts and jurisdictions, and it answers to more than one generation.
The firm is led by three managing partners — in international law, in tax and inheritance, and in mergers and acquisitions — who between them hold every part of a family’s position: its capital, its structure and its succession. We act for a deliberately small number of clients, and we act for them over decades.
Practice
We administer substantial estates and plan their transfer long before it is needed — so that operating businesses, investment interests and property pass to the people intended, on the terms intended, without negotiation.
We form, govern and represent single-family offices: their structure, their investment mandates, and the agreements that hold a family to a common purpose when its members would prefer otherwise.
Drafting, restructuring and defending trust arrangements. We advise trustees, protectors and beneficiaries on their duties and their rights — and we enforce both.
Wealth attracts claims. We place our clients’ holdings beyond the reach of creditors, litigants and opportunists across jurisdictions, and we answer any challenge to that position directly.
Direct investments, co-investments, fund commitments and the acquisition or sale of family businesses. We negotiate from strength and we read every line.
Inheritance and succession tax, the conveyance of real property and the tax structure of cross-border holdings — handled so that what is built is not surrendered on its way to the next generation.
Managing Partners
Managing Partner · International Law
Based in New York. Leads the firm’s cross-border work: the structures, disputes and jurisdictional questions that arise when a family’s wealth outgrows a single country.
Managing Partner · Tax, Inheritance & Conveyance
Responsible for the tax position of every estate the firm administers, the planning of inheritances and the conveyance of property held by families and their trusts.
Managing Partner · Mergers & Acquisitions
Leads the firm’s transactional practice: the acquisition and sale of family businesses, private equity investments and the negotiations in which our clients’ capital is at stake.
Principles
Our clients’ affairs are not discussed outside the engagement. We do not publish client lists, matters or testimonials.
We measure relationships in generations. The partners who structure a family’s holdings remain answerable for them.
We prefer to settle matters quietly. When that is not possible, we do not concede ground that belongs to our clients.
Contact
Write to the partner whose discipline your matter concerns.
We accept a limited number of new engagements each year. Correspondence is read by the partners themselves and answered in confidence.