The family office relocation playbook: seven phases from diagnosis to governance

Relocating a family's centre of gravity is not a move; it is a programme. Tax residence, companies, trusts, investments, schools, banking and a decade of paperwork all have to change position in the right order, or the family ends up resident in two places and compliant in neither. This playbook sets out the phases that sound relocations follow, and the traps that unsound ones fall into.

Why families relocate, and why it goes wrong

The motives are familiar: a stable legal system, a favourable tax regime, security, education, lifestyle, proximity to a business. The failures are just as familiar: a move undertaken for one reason (usually tax) without respecting the rules that decide whether it counts, or a move that works for the family and breaks the structures built around them. The remedy is sequence and evidence: decide deliberately, move in a defined order, and keep a file that proves what happened.

This playbook assumes the family has already read the fundamentals in citizenship, residency and tax residency and that a second passport, if any, is being planned with the staged approach in sequencing a second passport. Nothing here is tax advice for a particular case; the point is to show the shape of the work so it can be done properly with qualified advisers.

Seven phases

Phase 1: Diagnose the starting position

Before choosing a destination, map what exists:

• Who is resident where today, for each family member, under each country's rules, and how long they have been.
• Assets and structures: operating businesses, holding companies, trusts and foundations, real estate, financial accounts, and where each is managed and controlled.
• Exit exposure: whether leaving triggers an exit tax on unrealised gains, deemed disposals, clawbacks of prior reliefs, or reporting obligations, and for which assets.
• Ties that survive a move: property available for use, family, business interests, social and economic connections.
• Constraints: nationality rules, sanctions or screening profile, family circumstances such as divorce or dependants.

Phase 2: Choose the destination on a real scorecard

Score candidate jurisdictions against what the family actually needs, not the marketing:

A destination that looks cheapest on tax can be the most expensive once presence requirements, special-regime conditions and the cost of real accommodation are counted. The Atlas and Global Matrix are good for the immigration route; the tax and substance analysis needs local advisers.

Phase 3: Secure the right to be there

Obtain the immigration status first, in the form that allows genuine residence and, where needed, work. An investment-linked residence permit, a long-term visa or a citizenship-derived right of abode all do different jobs. Be realistic about timing: permits take months, and approval does not itself move tax residence. Keep the sequencing rule in mind: status before move, move before restructure.

Phase 4: Plan the exit from the old residence

Leaving is a separate project, with its own rules:

• Establish the date and the evidence of departure: selling or giving up the home, ending local employment or board roles, moving family members, closing local ties.
• Settle exit taxes and reporting before you leave where the rules require, and understand any tail liabilities.
• Check treaty tie-breakers so that the old country does not continue to claim residence, typically by permanent home, centre of vital interests, habitual abode and, last, nationality.
• Manage the transition year. Some systems split a year at the date of departure, others treat residence for the whole year; the order and timing of income and disposals in that year can matter greatly.

Phase 5: Establish the new residence properly

Residence is shown, not claimed. The family should, in practice:

• live in accommodation available to them, with a lease or deed in their name;
• register with the local authorities and tax system as required;
• enrol children in local schools and register with healthcare providers;
• keep a contemporaneous residence file: travel records, utility bills, bank and card statements, school records, club memberships, professional registrations;
• track days in every relevant country, with a dated calendar, because the family's evidence will be tested against it.

Phase 6: Restructure assets and entities

Only once residence is established should structures move. Questions to resolve with advisers:

• Where are companies managed and controlled? Many systems treat a company as resident where its key decisions are actually made; relocating directors can relocate the company's tax residence, intentionally or not.
• Trusts and foundations: the residence and powers of trustees, settlors and beneficiaries can each affect tax treatment. Changes of residence for any of them can have consequences.
• Controlled foreign company and similar anti-avoidance rules can attribute the income of low-taxed entities to their owners.
• Reporting regimes. Under the OECD's Common Reporting Standard, financial institutions report accounts by tax residence, and the crypto-asset framework extends this to digital assets, so changes in residence flow through to what is reported and to whom.
• Real estate and operating assets may carry their own taxes on transfer or use.

Phase 7: Govern it for years

The first year is the easiest. Years two to five are where discipline fails: day-counts drift, structures gather mismatches, permits come up for renewal, rules change. Put in place an annual review covering residence evidence, permit conditions, structure compliance, reporting, and the next generation's documents. In our methodology this is Lifelong Governance, the phase most families under-resource.

Eight traps

1. Moving the paperwork, not the life. A permit and a rented flat that nobody uses is not a relocation.
2. Forgetting the home that remains available. A retained family home in the old country can sustain a claim of residence there.
3. Assuming a passport changes tax. It does not.
4. Restructuring before moving. Moving assets or entities too early can trigger taxes in the old country without securing a benefit in the new one.
5. Ignoring dual residence. Spending significant time in two countries can leave both claiming you.
6. Neglecting the children's position. Schools, language, nationality and age thresholds all matter.
7. Treating special regimes as permanent. Favourable regimes for new residents often have time limits or conditions.
8. No evidence file. The family that cannot prove where it lived will be treated as living wherever the authority says.

Who needs to be in the room

A sound relocation is a team effort: a tax adviser in the old country, a tax adviser in the new one, an immigration specialist, a lawyer for structures and trusts, a banker and, ideally, one coordinator who owns the sequence and the calendar. Indohill's role is the last of these and the immigration layer, working with the family's own advisers. If you would like the coordination done properly, start a private conversation.