When entering into a business relationship with a family member, how do you keep the dinner table separate from the boardroom table?

• Use first names at work. When Gillian Stovel Rivers joined her father’s Burlington, Ont., Assante Financial Management Ltd. practice in 2005, she made a conscious effort to call her father “Gord” instead of “Dad.”

“I needed clients to know that this is a professional work environment,” says Stovel Rivers. “They need to know me as Gillian, not ‘Gord’s daughter’.”

• Leave family issues at home. Gerry Guilfoyle, founder of Toronto-based Guilfoyle Financial Planning Inc., and his two sons, Andrew and Blair, abide by an unwritten rule when running their financial advisory business: talk about family issues at home and about work issues in the office. And never the twain shall meet. On a Monday, Blair will come home from work to his wife, who often asks what his father and brother did over the weekend. Says Blair: “I say, ‘You know, I really don’t know because I didn’t have a chance to ask them.”

• Leave business issues at the office. Similarly, when the senior Guilfoyle gets a burst of insight about a client’s case after 6 p.m., he won’t call either of his sons at home. “I leave a message on their work voice mail,” he says. “They can pick it up when they have a chance.” — OLIVIA GLAUBERZON