Estate & legacy
The passing of a person is also the passing of a structure.
Wealth, a family office, a holding, a foundation — these do not pause when a life ends. They need to be read, secured and carried forward through the transition. Serendipity can be appointed as executor for the estate and the legacy, to orchestrate the estate and follow up the will — for families, family offices and private individuals (HNWI) alike.
- During life
- Named in the testament, with a plan held quietly in reserve.
- Unexpectedly
- Available to step in when there was no warning.
- Family offices
- Carrying the estate so the family office keeps running.
- Private individuals
- The same executor role for HNWI without an office behind them.
The weight of a transition
A passing turns a private matter into a legal and financial one, often at the worst possible moment.
The people closest to the one who passed are rarely the best placed to also run the estate. There are deadlines that do not wait, filings that must be right the first time, and a structure that may have been held together by one person's signature — a signature that no longer exists.
An executor carries that weight on behalf of the family. Not as a replacement for the family's own advisors, but as the one accountable hand that keeps them aligned, meets the deadlines, and follows the will faithfully — so the family can do what only the family can do.
For a family office or a complex holding, the role is larger still. The executor must understand not only the will but the living structure around it, or the estate will be settled at the cost of the structure that took a generation to build.
When we are called
Appointed during life, and available when there was no time to prepare.
Appointed during life
Most often we are asked to act well before the moment. A founder names us as executor in the testament years ahead, so the family knows who will carry the file and the family knows how to reach us. We meet the family, understand the structure, and hold a quiet plan that only needs to be opened when the time comes.
When someone passes unexpectedly
We are also there when there was no warning. A family left with a structure, a will and no one to orchestrate it can turn to us to step in: secure the estate, take the first legal steps within the deadlines, and bring order before the pressure mounts.
Alongside the family office
Where a family office exists, a passing is rarely only personal — it changes mandates, shareholdings and governance. We work beside the office, carrying the estate-specific work so the office can keep running the family's affairs without being consumed by the transition.
For the private individual
Not every estate sits behind a family office. A private individual with meaningful wealth — holdings abroad, a company, a foundation — faces the same filings and the same deadlines, often without anyone to coordinate them. We step in as executor for HNWI just as we do for offices: one accountable hand through the whole passage.
Reading the will and the structure
Before anything moves, we read what is actually there.
The testament, the holdings, the mandates, the foundations, the family office arrangements and the personal wishes that never made it onto paper. We map the estate as it stands, identify the questions that need answering first, and set the order of work before anyone is asked to decide under pressure.
Orchestration of the specialists
One line of coordination instead of a scramble of advisors.
Notary, tax advisor, lawyer, banker, accountant and the family office itself. A passing creates a wave of filings, valuations and deadlines that overlap and contradict. We hold the centre — keeping the specialists aligned, challenging them where needed, and making sure nothing falls between two desks at the worst possible moment.
Execution of the estate
The estate, settled with the same care it was built with.
Locating and securing assets, settling debts and taxes, handling cross-border elements, and distributing the legacy according to the will and the law. We carry the administrative weight so the family can grieve and decide without also becoming executors of a structure they may never have fully seen.
Continuity for the family office and the structure
A transition should not become a fault line.
Where a family office, a holding or a foundation is involved, a passing can destabilise the whole structure: mandates lapse, signatures change, governance freezes. We keep the machinery standing through the transition — holding decisions, bridging key-person gaps, and handing the structure back intact when the family is ready to take it forward.
Carried quietly
The principles that hold when everything else is in motion.
An estate is not a transaction; it is a trust, held through a difficult passage. These are the standards we keep throughout.
Senior, not junior
Estate work is sensitive and irreversible. It is carried by senior practitioners who have done this before, not handed to a junior to learn on.
Discretion as a default
A passing draws attention from people who should not have it. We work quietly, through the right channels, and protect the family's privacy throughout.
No product of our own
We sell nothing and take no commission on assets. The estate is handled in the family's interest alone, with the family's own advisors kept in their seats.
How we work
We meet the family and the structure long before we are ever needed, and we are there when we are.
The strongest executor arrangement is the one made in good time: a founder names us in the testament, we come to know the family and the structure, and a plan is held quietly until the day it is opened. When that day comes without warning, we step in just the same — securing the estate, meeting the first deadlines, and bringing order before the pressure settles.
Based in Amsterdam. Senior practitioners, no junior handoffs. Since 2014.
Cross-border, worldwide
An estate rarely stops at one border — and neither do we.
Wealth today sits across jurisdictions: a holding in one country, a residence in another, a foundation elsewhere, beneficiaries on three continents. A passing sets all of it in motion at once, and each jurisdiction brings its own rules, its own deadlines and its own authorities.
We work cross-border, worldwide, and we have done so for years. We always work to the requirements of the legal jurisdiction in question — never around them — and we hold a wide network of trusted contacts across many jurisdictions, covering tax, inheritance and the matters that touch them.
Where the estate reaches into a country we have not worked before, we engage a local specialist from that network and carry the coordination ourselves, so the family still has one accountable hand — while every filing meets the law of the land it belongs to.