When the architecture composed for one generation must hold for the next.
Composed in advance, or composed under pressure.
Transitions arrive without much courtesy. The architecture composed for the family of last week must hold the family of this morning, and the obligations do not pause for grief or for counsel that has not yet been retained.
The work divides cleanly into two registers. Composed in advance, the architecture absorbs the transition without compounding it. Composed under pressure, the family pays a multiple for the same work — in dollars and in attention both.
The role of the firm is to hold the table when the family cannot — coordinating estate counsel, tax counsel, corporate counsel, custodians, carriers, and beneficiaries on a single timeline so the family is asked to make decisions, not to chase them.
Four domains the early days will not wait on.
In the absence of a prior architect, each falls to the surviving spouse, the executor, or the rising generation — rarely at their best moment to perform it.
The first weeks. Immediate-term coordination.
Notification of advisors, custodians, carriers, and counsel. Cash-flow continuity for the household and any operating entity. Account access and signing authority confirmed against the family’s current decisions. Rarely complex. Always sequential. The sequence matters.
The estate response.
Probating the will. Filing the terminal return — the tax the CRA triggers at death, as if everything had been sold that day. Rolling assets to a surviving spouse where that defers the tax. Using first-year elections that recover tax already paid when losses appear in the estate. Estate counsel leads; we coordinate tax counsel, corporate counsel, and beneficiaries so every election is filed on time and against one integrated position.
Insurance, claims, and the obligations they fund.
Personal and corporate policy claims. Beneficiary verification against the current estate plan. Confirmation that the obligations the coverage was written to fund — estate liability, buy-sell trigger, key-person continuity — are settled in the order the documents require. Where circumstances have changed without a matching policy review, the architecture is reset.
The new architecture, for the new family.
Wills, trusts, powers of attorney, the Family Policy Statement, the investment policy, the philanthropic intent — each reviewed against the family that exists now. Patient, sequenced over the year that follows, with existing counsel at the table throughout.
Three phases, scaled to the kind of transition the family is in.
We enter at whichever phase the family is in and carry the relationship through the phases that follow. The objective is to remove from the family every decision that is sequential rather than substantive.
The family had retained me on the estate within forty-eight hours. What they had not retained, and needed within the same week, was a coordinator to hold the work between counsel, accountant, carrier, and corporate registry. Senatus held that table while we did our work. The first month was, by some measure, the most orderly first month of an estate of that complexity I have administered.
Twelve adjacent audiences.
Most principals belong to more than one. The architecture is composed for the family in front of us; the descriptions below are how families most often arrive.
The Founder’s Chapter
The enterprise, the estate, and the architecture, coordinated in concert.
The Liquidity Event
Approaching, mid-sale, or year one beyond the exit — the architecture for the years that follow.
The Stewardship Chapter
Families two and three generations into the enterprise and the estate.
Business Owners & Founders
The founder whose balance sheet lives inside the operating company.
Real Estate Developers & Principals
Entity-dense portfolios, refinancing cycles, and the passage of the book.
Medical, Dental & Allied Health
Professional corporations, retained earnings, and the practice as an asset.
Legal, Accounting & Finance
Senior professionals whose own architecture is the last to which they have time to attend.
Executives & Senior Corporate Leaders
Concentrated equity, deferred compensation, RSU cadences, and the sequencing each requires.
Technology Founders & Venture Principals
Pre- and post-exit founders, operators, and fund principals; the tax position differs at each stage.
Cross-Border Families — Canada & U.S.
Dual residency, dual citizenship, U.S.-situs assets, and the treaty work each occasions.
Women Principals & Female Heads of Household
Founders, executives, widows, and inheritors, engaged on terms of their own choosing.
Philanthropists & Family Foundations
Families for whom philanthropy has moved from line item to operating discipline.
Hold the table for the family.
Architecture composed before a transition absorbs it. Composed under pressure, it compounds. If a transition is in front of the family or has already begun, write to us. Inquiries are read in confidence and answered within one business day.