Private wealth & family office · Calgary

Your family’s accounts, companies, trusts and papers, laid out side by side.

Most families we meet have accounts at several institutions, a company or two, a trust, estate documents signed in different years, and advisers who rarely speak to each other. We lay it all out together, find where the pieces disagree, and keep the record current as the family changes.

Get in touch See a worked example

Based in Calgary, working with families across Canada.

Records map

Hypothetical · not a client

An invented family, after the sale of its operating company.

Accounts: Personal accounts. Received part of the sale proceeds.
Companies: Holding company. Received part of the proceeds. The operating company has been sold.
Trusts: Family trust. Received the rest.
Estate documents: Wills. Written when the business was the family’s main asset.
They still describe a business the family no longer owns.
Advisers: Legal counsel. Will need to bring the estate documents into line.

3 open questions before anything is investedWorked example A

Problems usually sit where two documents meet.

Each account, company and trust was set up for its own reason, often by a different adviser in a different year. Looked at alone, each one usually works.

Trouble shows up in between: a shareholders’ agreement that contradicts the will, a trust nobody has reread since it was settled, a tax bill that falls due while the cash sits inside a company. Those gaps only become visible once everything is laid out together, so that is where we start.

How the work proceeds

What the family has at the end.

Working documents, written in plain language, that the family and its advisers can all read. Which ones you need depends on what you hold.

Consolidated statement

Everything the family owns and owes, across every entity and institution, including holdings we don’t manage.

Family Office Services

Structure map

One diagram of companies, trusts and personal holdings, showing who owns and who controls each.

Wealth & Estate Planning

Document register

Every will, agreement, trust deed and designation, with its date and the places it conflicts with the others.

Wealth & Estate Planning

Questions for your advisers

Tax and legal questions written out with the context your accountant and lawyer need to answer them.

Wealth & Estate Planning

Cash calendar

Tax instalments, trust distributions, capital calls and renewals, dated in advance so none arrives as a surprise.

Family Office Services

Investment policy

A short document linking the portfolio to the family’s spending, obligations and dates.

Investment Management

Four services, the same records.

Most families use two or more. They share a single engagement and the same records, and the family’s own lawyer and accountant keep their roles.

Investment ManagementPortfolios built around what the family has to pay for and when. We offer no proprietary products. Wealth & Estate PlanningWills, trusts, shareholdings and insurance read side by side, with open questions put to your lawyer and accountant. Family Office ServicesConsolidated reporting, a cash calendar and a kept record, for families without an office of their own. Next Generation & LegacyFamily meetings, a short written charter, and staged financial education for heirs.

Hypothetical example B · not a client

Preparing a third generation before a transition begins.

A transition is coming, and the information the family would need sits almost entirely with the founding generation. Nobody has called a meeting about it, and roles after the transition haven’t been discussed.

We would propose a facilitated family meeting, a short written charter, a staged education program for the grandchildren, and disclosure sequenced so that each generation hears the context before the figures.

Walk through both examplesTwo invented families, used to explain the work.

Families we work with.

Most hold assets in more than one entity, have more than one generation involved, or both.

Business-owning families
Families after a sale
Multi-generational families
Families with trusts and holding companies
Executives and founders
Family foundations
Families after a death or inheritance
Families that already have their own office, for investment or estate work

Get in touch.

Tell us roughly what the family holds and what prompted you to write.

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