Reflections on our inaugural Family Office Mediation and Collaborative Practice Training
26 to 29 September 2026
Throughout my career, I have been passionate about helping families protect their wealth and carry their legacy from one generation to the next. Some of the most difficult moments in that work come when wealth, succession and deeply personal relationships collide.
It may look like a disagreement about a trust, a family business, property or an inheritance. Underneath, however, there can be decades of family history. One sibling may feel they carried more of the responsibility, two generations may see control of the business differently, or family members may each remember a parent’s wishes in their own way. Beneath it all can sit the fear that what a family spent generations building could become the very thing that pulls it apart.
Many people associate mediation with divorce, yet disputes within families of wealth are often more complicated, and they are rarely only about the money. When these disputes end up in court, the cost can reach well beyond legal fees. Relationships can break down, the family business can suffer, and private matters can become public.
At Cooley Family Office, we help families think carefully about wealth, succession and the structures that will carry their wishes forward, and we begin by listening. Before you can help resolve a family disagreement, you have to understand what is really driving it.
A Team Approach to Family Disputes
Collaborative Practice gives families a structured way to work through these disagreements in private. Each party has their own collaboratively trained lawyer, and everyone signs a participation agreement committing to resolve the matter without going to court. The lawyers work alongside a financial neutral, who helps untangle the assets, businesses and financial consequences, and family specialists such as psychologists and coaches, who help the family navigate the emotions and relationships that surface along the way and keep the process moving.
Working as one team, these professionals help the family reach a consensus of its own, with the relationships still intact, so that the family can find a way forward together.
My work introduced me to Anne-Marie Rice, Zinta Harris and Debbie Clinch, three Australian practitioners with decades of experience in collaborative practice, succession law and family dispute resolution. The more time I spent with them, the more convinced I became that families of wealth in Hong Kong, and the professionals who advise them, would benefit from this approach. With the AALCO Hong Kong Regional Arbitration Centre as our co-host, we set out to bring it to Hong Kong’s family office community.
Four Days at the Former French Mission Building
From 26 to 29 September, our first class of lawyers, financial professionals and family counselling specialists came together at the Former French Mission Building in Central. Many gave up their Mid-Autumn holiday to be there, a few spent their birthdays with us, and our trainers flew more than ten hours to join us. The building served as Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal from 1997 and today is home to organisations dedicated to arbitration and mediation. I cannot imagine a more fitting place to learn how to help families resolve their differences before they reach a courtroom.
Over the four days, the trainers took participants through a complete collaborative matter, from the first client meeting and the family’s orientation session to gathering information, exploring settlement options and documenting the final agreement. Much of the learning happened through role plays and live demonstrations, where lawyers, financial professionals and family specialists practised working on the same family’s problem together. The later sessions moved into harder ground, including grief and shame, power imbalances, blended families and questions of legal capacity.
We were also grateful to Richard Tao, Chairman of New Heritage Group, for sharing insights from a Hong Kong family office on the first morning, and to Natalie Smith, Managing Director at Murray Group, for leading a case study on trusts and trustees. Several participants arrived a little nervous on the first day, and by the time they received their certificates on the final afternoon, I saw people ready to take this work into their own practices.
Why It Matters for Hong Kong
Hong Kong is working to strengthen its position as a centre for international legal and dispute resolution services, an ambition that gained new momentum when the International Organization for Mediation was established here. Through the Family Office 2.0 initiative, the city is also welcoming more international families to set up their family offices in Hong Kong. These two goals meet in the families themselves, because a family choosing where to base its wealth for generations wants to know that, if disagreements arise, there are professionals here who can help resolve them privately, constructively and with care for the relationships involved. This programme was designed to help build that bench of professionals.
It was especially meaningful to close the programme alongside the Dr. Horace Cheung, Deputy Secretary for Justice; Mr Nick Chan, Director of the AALCO Hong Kong Regional Arbitration Centre; and Mr Jason Fong, Global Head of Family Office at Invest Hong Kong. Together, they represented the legal, dispute resolution, and investment sides of the ecosystem this work supports.
(r) Mr. Jason Fong, Global Head of Family Office at Invest Hong Kong
Read Dr Cheung’s closing remarks in full
In Dr Cheung’s address, he spoke on how mediation offers families privacy and the opportunity to find mutually beneficial solutions, and how collaborative practice brings multidisciplinary professionals together so that legal, financial and psychological considerations can be addressed in parallel. He noted that this training strengthens Hong Kong’s edge by growing a pool of professionals skilled in family mediation and collaborative practice.
For our inaugural class, and for everyone who helped bring this idea to life, that recognition was deeply encouraging.
With Gratitude
I am tremendously grateful to Anne-Marie, Zinta and Debbie for the knowledge and generosity they brought from Australia, to the AALCO Hong Kong Regional Arbitration Centre for partnering with us, and to our sponsors, Lewis Silkin,Tamar Chambers, Grand Hyatt Hong Kong, the Conflict Resolution Centre and Hugill & Ip Solicitors, as well as those who supported us anonymously. Most of all, thank you to our first class for the trust and commitment you brought to every session.
We began with a simple belief that keeping a family whole can be more important than winning an argument. Hong Kong now has a new group of professionals equipped to help families do exactly that, and I look forward to growing this community with all of you.
Ann Cooley, JD, CFP
(LinkedIn)