Oprah Winfrey, the famed and vastly wealthy US TV personality, has chosen to have her fortune managed by a private financial adviser. Going back to the origins of the “family office,” started by John D. Rockefeller in the late 1800s, That is a system where wealth managers handle only a single client or family.

Ms. Winfrey is going against the trend, which is for such offices to manage the fortunes of several families, in order to increase the range of expertise and to spread operating costs.

Recently, even the very wealthy have lost money and are looking for ways to control costs. Since the costs of operating a family office and providing the range of services that wealthy families expect are so high, the trend has been both towards offering services to more clients and towards mergers among such offices to increase scale. However, in the case of Oprah, her goals seem to be less about saving money than about privacy and control.

Some may say her goal is challenged by proposed law changes ending the exemption that has relieved family offices from Securities and Exchange Commission public disclosure requirements. Those proposals would require disclosure of the amount of assets under management, which would give clues to what a family is worth. One way of hiding such information is for family offices to manage the assets of several families together. See The New York Times article. I run a “family office” lawyer practice, structuring trusts and estates in an international context. I do not manage money, but rather work with family offices and other wealth managers, some of which handle very many large estates of prominent families.