For families whose wealth has outgrown any single advisor.
The cost of uncoordinated counsel has come to exceed the cost of coordinating it.
The families Senatus serves differ in balance sheet, jurisdiction, generation, and in the advisors already in place. They share a single recognition.
For some, the recognition arrives with a liquidity event. For others, with a generational handoff. For many, it arrives quietly — in one advisor’s comment on a document drafted by another. For a few, after it is already too late.
Three lenses upon a single architecture.
By chapter. By profession. By context. Most principals belong to more than one.
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.
The Transition
Widowhood, divorce, inheritance, or the passage to the next generation.
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 across generations.
Medical, Dental & Allied Health
Professional corporations, retained earnings, and the economics of 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.
When the cost of waiting exceeds the cost of acting.
It arrives when a missed election, a mistimed transaction, or an undocumented assumption costs more than any discipline-specific advisor can catch on a quarterly cycle — when each advisor is excellent alone, and the family pays for the gaps between them; when the next generation must be introduced to the enterprise and no one holds the mandate to do so; when the operating company, the estate, and the cross-border position are each well-handled in isolation, and no single seat holds them together.
The relationship is not designed for every family.
Senatus is composed for families whose affairs have outgrown any single discipline — and whose complexity warrants the retainer. Where circumstances are uncomplicated, or a transactional relationship is what is sought, the firm will say so in the first conversation and, where appropriate, point the family toward counsel better suited to the position.
Proactive counsel now, or reactive counsel later. One or the other, invariably. Fit is discussed candidly, and early. No pursuit follows a polite decline.
Tell us about your family.
Every private client inquiry is read and answered within one business day. We will be candid about whether the fit is right.