Ah, I gotcha. Your situation is a lot like mine was when I got serious about diving.
Yeah, I can understand about taking the wife and kids to a NJ shipwreck (or any shipwreck for that matter). Real shipwrecks are a complete disaster area, in the most profound sense of the term. There's cable, lines, rust and jagged metal everywhere, and they're often draped in fishermen's nets to boot. Entaglement and collapsing hazards are everywhere, not to mention the danger of fuel and acids and... The worst... Entrapment hazards. True wreck diving is serious stuff, and a certain mindset is an absolute requirement to engage in the activity with any degree of safety margin. Many an experienced, educated and vastly qualified diver has lost his life on true shipwrecks.
The artificial reef, the "on-purpose" shipwreck, on the other hand, nas been sanitized for the safety of divers. Typically, lead-based paints, batteries, engines and petroleum products have been removed, and many ports have been cut to ensure that entrapment is a very small risk. They're also placed in areas such that the "wreck" sits within recreational dive limits (usually), on a sandy bottom where there's good visibility, and current is either a non-issue or a very small issue, comparatively speaking. Properly researched, the artificial reef can be introduced to your family with comparatively little risk while still offering them the thrill of diving a wreck.
Combined with your ability to obtain fills, it sounds to me like the purchase of a good BC would be very beneficial to you, and enable you to do a lot more diving than you would do otherwise. I recommend seeking professional training locally for the "hardest core" diving that you're planning on doing - which it sounds like will be NJ wreck or artificial reef diving. I think that once you (and your family, if possible) takes this sort of training, you'll find that the sort of BC that you gravitate towards will be the same sort that most wreck and reef divers gravitate toward - the backplate and wing. For performance, trim and balance, they simply can't be beat, and they offer the ability to swap and change wings from lightweight, tropical "travel" wings to heavy, large wings to doubles wings (a requirement for any sort of overhead diving - especially wreck diving... Which you at least want the opportunity to do if NJ's famous wrecks begin to interest you). Backplates and wings also have the incredible advantage that they don't wear out or become outdated, and the entire harness can be replaced by you for around $12... Which you'll probably end up doing every couple of years if you're rough with your gear, which NJ wreck divers typically are. Backplates and wings are incredibly streamlined and don't "parachute" in current like regular BCs do, making them the choice for performance-oriented divers, and pack completely flat for traveling. There's even an aluminum plate available that weighs about one pound, making it lighter than the vast majority of BC's, especially when wet... Making plane travel to tropical destinations a breeze.
Backplates and wings also have the distinct "cool factor" of being uber-tech in appearance, which definitely draws a lot of people to them - but my favorite feature about them is that they still look uber-tech years later, when most people's BCs look like they're on their last leg.
Backplates and wings have the reputation for being super-expensive, but that's not really true... Sure, there's a lot of BCs out there that are only a couple of hundred dollars, but the top of the line stuff can run $700 or more. The last I looked, Halcyon's Eclipse 30 MC pack (recognized as one of the best, if not THE best) runs just a tick over $500. Interestingly, the Eclipse 30 is what the main character in the movie "Into the Blue" with Jessica Alba wore during the entire movie. Even more interesting, if you watch the "making of" portion of the movie in the "bonus feature" section, you'll see that almost every photographer and videographer filming the movie also wore a variety of makes and models of backplates and wings. Frankly, that's for a reason.
Years ago I wrote an article about backplates and wings, along with two other types of buoyancy compensators, here:
http://www.deepsouthdivers.org/old/homebc.html . I hope you'll read it and find it informative.
If a backplate and wing seems too "hardcore" for you at first, reconsider and try one. Alternatively, Dive Rite makes a Transpac, which is simply a backplate and wing without the backplate. It, too, is very streamlined, offers a variety of snap-in wings of different sizes and lifts, and can handle doubles if you find yourself wanting to venture into the wrecks. It also offers an optional backplate which simply snaps in, so that if you find yourself longing for a plate, it can be easily added without having to buy an entirely new system. A lot of "tech" divers I know use a Transpac with a plate, then remove it so that their BC can simply fold up for plane travel to exotic vacation destinations.
It's interesting to note, too, that if you go to eBay and look at what used BCs are selling for, you'll find that backplates and wings (loosely including the Dive Rite Transpac) tend to never go out of style and retain their value much more than an off-the-shelf BC like an Oceanic or Scubapro. This speaks volumes about their life expectancy and longevity, and how they are valued by experienced divers. It also means that if you ever decide to sell your scuba gear, you'll be much better compensated for your gear, making the cost of diving considerably less in the long run.
Hope that helps.