The chapter in which the architecture of the past must answer to the family of the present.
Inherited architecture, reviewed against the family that holds it now.
Multi-generational families do not arrive without architecture. They arrive with a great deal of it — the trusts settled by a grandparent, the holding company structured at a sale a generation ago, the wills drafted before the rising generation was born, the insurance policies funding obligations that no longer obtain. The work is rarely to undo any of it. It is to put it in relation to the family that exists today.
The slow erosion that catches stewardship families is not catastrophic. It is incremental. The trust whose twenty-one-year anniversary is approaching without a sequenced plan. The shareholders’ agreement that no longer reflects who is in the room. The family member added to the policy in 2008 and not reviewed since. The philanthropy run as a line item rather than a discipline. None of these constitute failure; they constitute the half-life of structures composed for a different chapter.
The work of the stewardship chapter is patient, continuous, and architectural. Less the construction of new structures, more the disciplined review and quiet adjustment of structures already in place — coordinated across the family’s existing tax, legal, and corporate counsel, and held to a single point of accountability for the integrity of the whole.
Four reviews the calendar tends to defer.
Each is the kind of work that rarely competes with the urgent matters of the operating company or the active obligations of the senior generation. Each, attended to in time, materially shapes the family’s position a decade hence.
The trust review, ahead of the twenty-one-year horizon.
The deemed disposition under s. 104(4) of the Income Tax Act at the twenty-one-year anniversary of a personal trust is rarely a planning event when it arrives; it is a planning event five to seven years before. Distribution under s. 107(2), restructuring, addition of a new trust, sub-trust formation — the options are wide if the calendar permits, and narrow if it does not. The work is sequenced with the family’s tax counsel before time is the constraint.
Governance documents, refreshed against the family in the room.
The shareholders’ agreement drafted when the founders were still operating, the family constitution authored before the rising generation came of age, the buy-sell mechanic funded against a balance sheet that no longer applies. The disciplined review — clause by clause, with corporate counsel, with the family in the room — surfaces the gaps before a triggering event surfaces them at cost.
The introduction of the rising generation.
The next generation does not arrive ready to steward what they did not build. The work is not delegation; it is preparation — structured exposure to the architecture, to the advisors, to the governance, to the obligations and the optionality both. Senatus convenes the conversations the senior generation rarely has the time or the distance to compose alone.
Philanthropy, as discipline rather than line item.
For families at this stage, philanthropy is rarely a question of whether. It is a question of how. The private foundation versus the donor-advised fund. The donation of appreciated public securities. The donation of qualified small business corporation shares ahead of a future sale. The treaty considerations for cross-border giving. Held as discipline, philanthropy compounds family meaning across generations as deliberately as capital compounds value.
A continuing rhythm, kept across generations.
The engagement begins with a documented architectural review of the family’s position as it currently stands — the trusts, the entities, the policies, the agreements, the philanthropy, the governance documents already in place. The review is circulated to the family’s existing counsel before any action is recommended.
From that foundation, the relationship operates on the cadence the chapter requires: an annual structural review, quarterly working sessions, and proactive coordination ahead of any consequential decision. The engagement is composed to outlast any individual advisor at the firm, and to be inherited by the rising generation when the time arrives.
“My father composed the structure thirty years ago, with the best counsel of his generation. The work of the engagement was not to second-guess any of it. It was to put what he built in conversation with the family that exists today — my children among them.”
If the architecture of a prior generation is overdue for review, the next step is a private conversation.
Senatus accepts a limited number of new relationships each year, predominantly through private referral. A member of the Private Office will respond, in confidence, within twenty-four hours.
Request a Private ConversationTwelve 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.