Estate Planning Partner, UHNW (San Francisco)

Job Summary:

At Mercer Advisors, our purpose is to amplify and simplify our clients’ financial lives through a fully integrated family office offering. We bring together fiduciary professionals across disciplines to do the best work of their careers—as one unified team committed to doing what’s right for clients. We continue to reinvest in our people and platform so that our growth creates more opportunities for teammates and more value for clients.

Regis is Mercer Advisors’ offering designed for ultra-high net worth families with complex, multi-generational wealth. Regis clients often have the means to build their own family office, and they require a deeply integrated wealth management experience with the highest level of service, coordination, and sophistication. We are a team of world-class fiduciary professionals delivering holistic advice across investments, financial planning, estate strategy, tax strategy, and more with the aim of making every client feel like our only client.

We are seeking an exceptional Estate Planning Partner - Regis to serve as a primary strategic advisor, team leader, and subject matter expert for our Regis families. You will lead engagements alongside senior wealth advisors and other Regis team members with direct accountability for the estate planning client outcomes and experience of our most complex families. This is not a support or review role—you will bring the credibility, judgment, and gravitas that UHNW families expect from their most trusted advisors who are entrusted with their family’s financial wellbeing.

Essential Job Functions for this role include:

• Lead client relationships alongside senior wealth advisors and serve as the in-house estate planning strategic partner and subject matter expert to Regis families.
• Maintain and grow a book of Regis clients, families with balance sheets that often exceed +$100M.
• Manage a select team of UHNW-focused estate strategists, and other operational support specialists to drive excellent client outcomes.
• Partner with Mercer’s broader team of in-house, interdisciplinary, experts or a client’s outside advisors to integrate advanced estate planning strategies within the broader financial plan.
• Support new client development through participation in prospective client meetings, industry conferences, and contributions to thought leadership content and publications.
• Serve as a key partner to Regis leadership in efforts to improve and grow the platform – encompassing enhancements to our service and operating model, technology stack, as well as talent or organizational design.
• Design and implement comprehensive estate plans incorporating advanced wealth transfer techniques, including irrevocable trusts (GRATs, IDGTs, ILITs, SLATs, CRTs, QPRTs), revocable trusts, wills, powers of attorney, healthcare directives, and funding-related documents.
• Lead multi-generational planning conversations, including family governance structures, wealth education for heirs, trustee selection, and succession design for closely held businesses.
• Advise on complex estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax strategies; proactively identify planning windows and legislative risk.
• Design and implement complex FLLCs and other business structures, including formation, entity selection, succession planning, buy/sell agreements, and business tax planning.
• Advise on trust administration matters, trust modification and decanting strategies, and trustee/beneficiary conflict navigation.
• Prepare and review deeds, real property transfer documents, and federal and state estate and gift tax returns.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Juris Doctor (J.D.) from an accredited law school; LL.M. in Taxation or Estate Planning strongly preferred.
• Licensed to practice law in at least one state.
• 15+ years of legal experience in estate planning, with the majority spent advising clients with balance sheets of $25M or greater; meaningful experience with $100M+ families required.
• Deep technical mastery of federal transfer tax law, trust and estate administration, and advanced wealth transfer planning techniques.
• Ability to interpret and convey complex estate planning topics clearly to wealth management teams and clients.
• Experience advising on business succession, liquidity events (IPOs, M&A exits, ESOP transactions), and the estate planning implications of closely held business interests.
• Prior experience in a private wealth department at an AmLaw 100/200 firm or a nationally recognized estate planning boutique.
• Comfort operating in a team-based, financial advisory environment and within a regulated RIA structure; prior experience at a family office, wealth management firm, or multi-family office is a differentiating asset.

Work Schedule:

This professional role requires availability during standard business hours of Monday through Friday from 8AM to 5PM. At times, the role may have early or late hours to meet business tasks and deadlines for external and internal client needs.

All roles classified as a non-exempt are required to record working time into the timekeeping system daily at the start and end of each workday plus a 30-minute unpaid lunch period.

Working Conditions:

This position may be in a professional office environment or a dedicated home office workspace which is free of interruptions. Whether position is in a dedicated office space or home office workspace, basic technology needs will be provided to satisfy position requirements. Routinely sitting and standing for periods of time. No heavy lifting over 10 lbs.