The chapter in which the architecture composed for one family must hold for another.
Composed in advance, or composed under pressure.
Transitions arrive without much courtesy. Death, divorce, inheritance, incapacity — the architecture composed for the family of last week must hold the family of this morning, and the obligations of the architecture do not pause for grief, transition, or counsel that has not yet been retained.
The work of the transition chapter divides cleanly into two registers. The work composed in advance — a current Family Policy Statement, a refreshed will, a sequenced freeze, an insurance policy in good standing, a continuity protocol the family knows how to invoke — is the work that absorbs the transition without compounding it. The work composed under pressure — estate administration begun without an advisor in place, a beneficiary update overlooked for a decade, a buy-sell triggered without funded coverage — is the work the family pays a multiple for, in dollars and in attention both.
Senatus is most useful in either register: composing the architecture in advance, when capacity and time are on the family’s side; and holding the coordination after, when neither is. The principles do not change. The cadence does.
Four domains the early days will not wait on.
Each is the work that, in the absence of a prior architect, falls to the surviving spouse, the appointed executor, or the rising generation in the first weeks — rarely the moments at which any of them is best positioned to perform it.
The first weeks. The immediate-term coordination.
Notification of advisors, custodians, carriers, and counsel. Cash-flow continuity for the household and for any operating entity. Account-by-account access and signing authority confirmed against the family’s current decisions. The work is rarely complex; it is sequential, and the sequence matters. We hold the timeline so the family does not have to.
The estate response.
Probate and the certificate of appointment under the Ontario Estates Act; the deemed disposition under s. 70(5) of the Income Tax Act; the spousal rollover under s. 70(6); the post-mortem loss carryback under s. 164(6) within the first year. Estate counsel leads; we coordinate the work across the family’s tax counsel, corporate counsel, and beneficiaries so that the elections are made on time and against a single integrated position.
Insurance, claims, and the obligations they fund.
Personal and corporate policy claims, beneficiary verification against the prevailing estate plan, and confirmation that the obligations the coverage was composed to fund — estate liability, buy-sell trigger, key-person continuity — are settled in the order the documents require. Where the family’s circumstances have changed without a corresponding policy review, the architecture is reset against the new position.
The new architecture, for the new family.
The wills, the trusts, the powers of attorney, the Family Policy Statement, the investment policy, the philanthropic intent — all reviewed against the family that exists now rather than the family that existed when the documents were last drafted. The work is patient and sequenced over the year that follows, with the family’s existing counsel at the table throughout.
Three phases, scaled to the kind of transition the family is in.
Engagements that begin in the acute phase — the first weeks of a death, an incapacity, or a divorce — lead with stabilisation. The objective is to hold the timeline, coordinate the immediate-term work across counsel already in place, and remove from the family any decision that is sequential rather than substantive.
From stabilisation, the engagement moves to the sequenced repair and renewal of the architecture for the family as it now exists. From there, into the continuing rhythm of an ongoing relationship, composed for the years of stewardship that follow.
“The family had retained me on the estate within forty-eight hours. What they had not retained, and what they 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.”
If a transition is anticipated, recently arrived, or already in motion, 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.