The Canadian Family Office Advantage

What This Book Delivers

Building wealth is difficult. Sustaining it across generations is rare. The Canadian Family Office Advantage is Marvin J. Schmidt's complete guide for the most affluent families and their advisors — a nearly 800-page reference built to be used, returned to, and shared, not read once and shelved.

Creating wealth is one achievement. Successfully stewarding it across generations is another — and remarkably few families succeed at both. Grounded in more than three decades advising Canada's wealthiest families and shaped by extensive research into a landscape that has largely borrowed its thinking from the United States, this book gives Canadian families and their professional advisors a reference point built for Canadian tax, legal, regulatory, and family realities.

Inside the Three-Legged Stool

Inside, you'll find a roadmap for multi-generational success, stronger family governance and unity, clarity across complex wealth decisions, and — at the centre of it all — the Three-Legged Stool: Marvin's framework for what a true family office requires. Without integration, complexity compounds. With it, families endure. Readers who want to go deeper can explore the companion tools on Resources, including the Family Office Fit Assessment built directly from the book's diagnostic questions.

This is not a book about getting rich. It is about ensuring your family never becomes part of the 90% who lose it. If there is one resource to guide your family across generations, this is it — and for families or advisors ready for a deeper conversation, Marvin is also available to speak directly to the ideas inside it.