The Noblehouse Family Office Principal & Head of Family Office argues that families with $5 million to $50 million or more lose more to tax, estate, and timing decisions than they realize.
Capital preservation is usually discussed as a portfolio question, about drawdowns, defensive allocations, and how much volatility a family can tolerate. Mekkos Jones, Principal and Head of Family Office at Noblehouse Family Office, works from a wider definition. In his view, much of what erodes a family’s capital at the $5 million to $50 million level happens in tax, estate, insurance, and banking decisions made outside the portfolio, and none of it is recorded on a statement.
The stakes are generational. In its December 2024 publication, Cerulli Associates projects that $124 trillion in US wealth will transfer through 2048, with $62 trillion coming from high net worth and ultra high net worth households, which make up 2% of US households. For the families Noblehouse serves, preservation means seeking to pass capital to the next generation as efficiently as their circumstances allow.
Measuring the Loss Before Managing It
Jones’s starting point is a number. Noblehouse calls the gradual loss of family wealth through uncoordinated decisions “leakage.” By the firm’s directional estimate, families in its target range may lose between $50,000 and $400,000 a year to these inefficiencies, potentially compounding over a generation. This is the firm’s estimate, rather than an independently established industry average; actual amounts vary by family.
“None of it shows up on a statement,” the firm writes in a May 2026 insights essay on where leakage hides. “All of it shows up in the wealth that should have transferred to the next generation.”
The firm’s process begins with an indicative estimate of potential inefficiencies. Noblehouse describes its Leakage Assessment as an evaluation taking roughly seven minutes across seven areas, returning a category breakdown, priority observations, and a ten-year projection of potential compounded costs. The subsequent Financial Architecture Review provides a more detailed map of potential gaps across tax, investment, estate, insurance, banking, and coordination. These estimates and projections depend on assumptions and the family’s circumstances; they do not establish realised losses or guarantee recoverable savings.
A Portfolio Built in Sleeves
On the investment side, Noblehouse runs a core and satellite portfolio divided into sleeves, each assigned a specific role. The core is diversified market exposure, which Jones describes as providing efficient market participation. Around it are satellite sleeves for private markets, dedicated income strategies, and opportunistic positions, chosen for added return potential, downside protection, or access to exposures that conventional channels do not offer.
The firm’s stated aim, in an April 2026 insights essay, is to “compound family capital efficiently across decades.” Each sleeve is coordinated with the family’s tax, estate, and liquidity position, which is where the firm looks for investment leakage. That includes fees and share classes nobody has questioned, tax-loss harvesting that was skipped, and asset location left uncoordinated across taxable, tax-deferred, and Roth accounts. A portfolio can perform well against its benchmark while fees and tax inefficiencies reduce the family’s net outcome, which is why Jones keeps the investment sleeves tied to the rest of the plan.
Concentration and Timing
Corporate executives are one of the clearest cases. Salary, bonus, vested shares, unvested awards, and deferred compensation can all depend on a single employer, so a drop in one stock can hit several parts of a family’s finances at once. In an October 2026 insights essay on concentrated positions, Jones set out why those decisions go wrong when they are handled separately.
“Executives with a large position in one company can be asset rich and cash constrained at the same time,” he wrote.
His recommendation is a single calendar listing every vesting date, exercise window, expiration date, and deferral election, shared by the executive’s tax, legal, and investment advisors. Blackout periods and pre-clearance rules can decide whether a sale is allowed at all, and tax treatment shifts with the award type, the holding period, other income that year, and the state of residence. Jones is direct about the trade-off at the center of it.
“Reducing concentration can also carry a tax cost, so the trade-off between exposure and tax is a real one,” he wrote.
Estate Plans That Keep Pace With the Business
The estate side has its own sources of loss. Noblehouse lists outdated documents, unused exemptions, life insurance held inside the taxable estate, and business interests with no succession structure among the most common sources of estate leakage.
Business owners face the problem most sharply, because the company often grows faster than the plan written around it. In his July 2026 insights essay, Jones recommended mapping which entities hold operating assets, real estate, investment accounts, insurance, and intellectual property, and how each connects to the family’s trusts and wills. Operating agreements, buy-sell arrangements, voting rights, and transfer restrictions all need reviewing against that map, along with a clear answer on who can act if an owner cannot.
“Business growth can change the context in which an estate plan operates,” he wrote.
The review, in his framing, is a check that the plan still fits the family, carried out by estate counsel, tax professionals, and the business team working from the same facts. Noblehouse says it coordinates the establishment and ongoing administration of trust structures, alongside insurance and risk planning, through its professional relationships, with the aim of keeping documents and the structures they govern aligned.
A Risk Discipline From Private Capital
Jones came to family wealth from institutional capital. According to Noblehouse’s biography, he previously managed a team responsible for more than $1 billion in private capital, credit, and real estate projects over the course of his career, overseeing strategy, execution, and risk. The biography also lists executive leadership at Catalyst Capital and institutional roles at Charles Schwab and Fidelity Investments.
That background informs how Noblehouse describes its organization. The firm says its professional network includes Enrolled Agents and CPAs, attorneys, institutional trust administrators, and banking specialists who coordinate around one plan for each family. Its private concierge banking service coordinates banking and credit relationships around the family’s balance sheet, while year-round tax planning includes coordinated return preparation through its professional network. The firm serves business owners, physicians and practice owners, executives, real estate principals, multigenerational families, and heirs.
Jones is careful about what coordination does and does not do. In his writing, he repeatedly separates the coordinating role from the decisions themselves, which stay with the family and the professional responsible.
“Coordination does not move any decision away from the executive or from the professional responsible for it,” he wrote of concentrated positions.
Preservation as an Ongoing Discipline
The approach Jones has built at Noblehouse treats capital preservation as continuous work across a family’s finances, assessed first and reviewed after major events such as a sale, a vesting schedule, or a change in the business. For families with $5 million to $50 million or more in investable assets, Jones’s case is that coordinating those decisions around the whole balance sheet is an important part of his approach to capital preservation. Coordination does not guarantee capital preservation or tax savings. Private investments can involve illiquidity, valuation uncertainty, and substantial losses. The appropriate approach depends on each family’s circumstances and the advice of qualified professionals.