Working in concert with the families we serve, and the advisors they keep.
Three principals, working in concert with the bench.
Senior counsel across tax, law, estate, M&A, and assurance — convened around the table the family already keeps. The disciplines that shape a family’s outcome arrive in coordination, not in sequence.
Twenty years of specialized practice, held by each advisor.
Tax, law, estate, M&A, financial advisory — the disciplines on the bench arrive as careers, not assignments. The judgment a family needs in the moment is the judgment that takes this long to earn.
Composed for the family in front of us — and the team already advising them.
The bench is chosen for your unique situation rather than drawn from a standing panel, fit to common instruments. Where lawyers, accountants, or advisors are already in place, the work is composed in concert with them — never around them.
What sets the firm apart.
One mandate, held at the firm.
The relationship outlasts the people who built it. Continuity is governed by written protocol — not by personality.
Read the methodology →Composed for the chapter that defines the decade.
Founders, principals approaching liquidity, families holding wealth across generations — the architecture is composed for the chapter you’re in, and the ones still ahead.
See who we serve →Trusted insights, written down.
Perspectives, the firm’s published library at the intersections of tax, law, governance, and legacy — the same register the work is held in.
Read perspectives →Material savings, ordinarily invisible.
The Number of the Year is 40× — the average return clients receive on the Private Advisory fee, in gaps named and corrected across investment, risk, tax, legal, and succession.
Learn more →-
I
Twenty-four hour response, in confidence.
Every inquiry from a current family is acknowledged within twenty-four hours. The Private Office sets the cadence; it is held.
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II
The annual reset, on the calendar.
The architecture is reviewed in its entirety once each year, with the family at the table and against current law and current circumstance. Recorded in writing.
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III
Direct communication. Unhurried, never delayed.
Difficult conversations are held early, in plain language, with the firm’s recommendation stated. A family is never asked to draw the conclusion the firm should have drawn.
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IV
More than was promised, by discipline rather than gesture.
Where the firm sees a structure, an opportunity, or a risk beyond the immediate scope, it is brought to the family’s attention. The orientation is always to the long-term position.
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V
Conflicts surfaced before they are noticed.
Any conflict of interest — in a structure, a recommendation, or a relationship within the bench — is disclosed in writing at the outset. The family decides how to proceed.
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VI
A standard measured in decades.
The relationships the firm seeks are not transactional. Excellence, in this practice, is measured not by what is visible on year one, but by what the architecture still quietly does on year thirty.
The principals who hold the seat.
Each engagement is led personally by a principal of the firm — convening the bench, setting the cadence, and signing the work that goes out under the family’s name.
Brett P. Nicholson
Brett P. Nicholson is the Founder and President of Senatus Wealth. He holds the mandate under which the firm’s specialist bench is convened — tax, law, estate, investment, assurance, governance, succession — in service of Canadian and cross-border families whose affairs have outgrown the shape of any single discipline.
The families held tend to be anchored by private operating enterprises, often held into a second or third generation. The engagements are retained, and the relationships are long. Most arrive through introduction — from an existing client, or from a trusted professional who has seen the difference coordinated counsel makes to a family’s position over time.
Across two decades, the work has produced results of the kind rarely visible on paper: tax positions preserved across a transaction that would otherwise have cost materially more; succession settled before the question was asked; continuity held through a liquidity event, an illness, a generational transition. The quality a family most values in its advisor, in Nicholson’s view, is the one least advertised — judgment under pressure, and the discipline to hold a considered course through it.
Beyond the practice, Nicholson is a Guest Lecturer at the Ivey Business School, Guest Contributor to BNN Bloomberg, a member of CALU, and the principal author of Perspectives, the firm’s published library at the intersections of tax, law, governance, and legacy. In 2013, he established the Nicholson Family Foundation. He has served since 2018 as Chair of For Peace of Mind at the London Health Sciences Foundation. His early academic training was in Management and Organizational Studies — Accounting, at the University of Western Ontario; his professional education has continued across the disciplines the firm’s work requires — including advanced studies in the CFA, CFP, CLU, CSC, and U.S. securities curricula.
Connect
brett@senatuswealth.com · LinkedIn
Career
Volunteerism
Raymond G. Adlington
Raymond G. Adlington holds the firm’s senior counsel for tax and business law, with more than twenty-five years of practice at the highest levels of the Canadian legal profession. The architecture beneath a family’s wealth, composed with care, is the foundation on which the rest endures.
A Past President of the Canadian Bar Association and a four-year member of the CBA–CPA Canada Joint Committee on Taxation, Adlington has advised the Department of Finance on tax policy and legislative drafting. His early legal studies were at Dalhousie University, and his career has extended across private practice, public policy, and the governance of the profession itself. He is a former Managing Partner and CEO of McInnes Cooper, and has been named a Best Lawyer in Canada for Tax and for Trusts and Estates since 2011, including Lawyer of the Year in Trusts and Estates.
Within the mandate, Ray leads succession, corporate reorganisation, intergenerational wealth transfer, and M&A structuring — held under the same confidentiality and institutional care that define his work in private practice.
Career
Volunteerism
Cindy Wilson
Cindy Wilson holds the firm’s senior counsel for private equity, mergers and acquisitions, and the strategic financial decisions that mark a family’s most consequential moments — the sale of a business, a liquidity event, the transition of ownership between generations.
Across more than twenty-five years, Wilson has advised at every stage of the transaction lifecycle: from PricewaterhouseCoopers in Toronto and Melbourne, through IBM Canada, to the closely held succession matters that now anchor her work at Senatus. The engagements are sensitive, the timelines unforgiving; the discipline is to keep the architecture steady while the transaction runs.
Wilson’s early academic training was in science at the University of Western Ontario and commerce at the University of Windsor; her professional education has continued across the disciplines the work requires — including the CPA, CA, CFA, and CSC curricula. Based in Toronto.
Career
Volunteerism
The balance of the firm’s bench serves in confidence. Discretion is the first condition of the relationship — and the bench, by design, is held for the few it is composed to serve.
Advanced Counsel. Collaborate with the bench, or join it.
Advisors who collaborate with the bench find the families they hold served more completely — and their own practice grown in the same direction. The work is composed so that advisor and family advance together, the economics moving with the client’s outcome rather than against it.
Professional advisorsSpeak with a principal.
Every private client inquiry is read and answered within one business day.