Marc Shuster helps billionaires. Whether it's navigating a high dollar divorce or finding a vault to stash fine art in a hurricane, Shuster manages it all—and then some—for his ultra wealthy clients.
Officially, Shuster is a partner at Florida law firm Berger Singerman, a position that lets him act as consigliere to a couple dozen billionaires and other high-net-worth families around the world. While he draws on his legal expertise, much of his work involves serving as a fixer—helping families manage and protect their business empires and the considerable wealth they've accrued, often over generations.
Having a lawyer or financial advisor to help with planning and investment insights isn't new for the ultra rich, but Shuster is part of a generational shift in wealth management away from long-standing institutions toward family offices.
These private companies have evolved into sophisticated one-stop-shops that offer billion-dollar families anything and everything they could need, including tailored advice for budgeting, charitable giving, succession planning, tax planning, and settling intra-family financial and business disputes. Shuster and his firm represent the family offices, and he is one part of a team tasked with providing advisory services for the ultra-high-net worth families in the U.S. and abroad.
And those advisory services are not strictly-financial tasks. He also helps with everything from vetting private schools to shopping for private jets to, yes, rescuing an art collection that is at risk of getting swept away in a hurricane.
During the recent Hurricane Helene-Hurricane Milton one-two punch that hit the U.S. South earlier this year, a client called fretting about their art collection—fortunately Shuster knew a guy.
"I got a call from a family in crisis as they were leaving Tampa to drive to their other house in Key West. They said, 'We have 15 original Warhols, can you hold them during the storm?' I didn't want to take on that liability, but I will find them a vault," Shuster tells Fortune. "The vault charged us $42,000 for three days. I know a vault guy. I’m pretty useful for that stuff."
It helps to know someone for virtually any scenario a billionaire might encounter, and professionals like Shuster keep substantial rolodexes. There are airplane consultants, car consultants, and art consultants, of course. And then there are those with more niche expertise like the "vault guy."
An 'interesting' practice
Family offices are continuously looking for new ways to deploy capital and find potentially better returns for their clients. That includes sussing out alternatives like venture capital, private equity, private credit, real estate, and more—things that would have required an institutional middle man a little over a decade ago. Now, savvy families do it on their own.
"These families, many of them have institutionalized and become their own full-throated funds or investment vehicles," he says. "It’s an interesting practice."
Slightly more common services might include acting as "Switzerland" in the divorce of a billionaire couple. Divorce is tough in even the simplest of financial situations; add a few thousand joint investments, multiple properties, and billions in assets, and it requires a bit more finesse.
He can also help families suss out potential private investments and real estate—commercial and residential—purchases. In any of these circumstances, Shuster and other attorneys in similar positions will work with a team of other experts—accountants, investment bankers, tax lawyers, and more, depending on the situation—to meet their clients' needs.
But much of the time, Shuster and other billionaire wealth managers work as therapists of a sort. With such sizable net worths come sizable feelings—and the possibility for myriad super-sized family disputes. Lawyers like Shuster often work with the same families over many years, and sometimes from one generation to the next, meaning they have more insight into the dynamics than most. He typically bills by the hour.
The discussions get more complicated as the feelings do. Shuster recalls a wealthy family in which one sibling lent a friend north of $50 million to start a company; that friend "committed a gross negligence in handling the money." The other siblings were furious when they found out; the sibling who lost the money didn't think he did anything wrong, resulting in more than a little arguing. But there's a way to get through every intra-family squabble, says Shuster, even if it requires months of tense negotiations.
"I try to meet them at their emotional point," says Shuster. And remind them, "you guys are family. I’m not going to go to my grave, and I suggest you don't either, that money is your driver. Love and family are."
