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Terentia: When the method lives in the firm, not the person

Industry -
Estate planning & trusts
Client -
Terentia
Focus area -
Trust lifecycle & family engagement
Status -
In pilot rollout
Terentia — estate planning and trusts

Summary

In a knowledge-intensive practice, the craft lived in people's heads and the relationships lived in individuals — so when someone left, expertise and families could leave with them.

Mnerva built Terentia: a platform that captures how the firm actually works — its task flows, decision rules, letter templates and compliance rhythm — and carries the full trust lifecycle from first prospect to ongoing governance, with a real experience for families alongside.

The result is designed to turn institutional knowledge into a shared, governed asset — reducing key-person risk while making the practice scalable.

Aa

Institutional memory

Knowledge, retained

The method lives in the platform, not individuals.

01

Searchable context

One governed layer

Scattered, people-held knowledge made shared.

Continuity as a control

Least-privilege

Access scoped, audited, revoked cleanly.

The starting point

The firm's real crown jewel was its understanding of each family — and that understanding sat with individuals. Talented staff learned the craft and eventually left, sometimes taking relationships with them. Principals carried most of the judgement, so growth was capped by their availability, and operations stayed manual and hard to scale.

The reframe was simple: build the expertise into a system, so the method lives in the platform rather than any one person.

Build the expertise into a system — so the method lives in the platform, not the person.

What Mnerva built

Terentia is delivered as three connected experiences: a dense team workspace for the practice, and a family app (native mobile plus a web portal) for the families they serve — over a single governed core.

Across the trust lifecycle

Prospect to mandate

A referral-and-partner funnel with attribution, an AI research agent that enriches prospects from public sources under human review, and versioned mandate & letter templates in the firm's own formats.

Family onboarding

Structured family and member capture, a customer information sheet with provenance, and a risk-profiling scorecard — with legacy records imported cleanly.

Trust setup, state-aware

Trust registration flows that adapt to trust type and state, so the expert, jurisdiction-specific steps are built into the task list rather than remembered.

Assets & valuations

A structured inventory across many asset categories, with valuations, liabilities, beneficiary designations and transfer stages.

Board meetings & resolutions

Agendas, resolutions and action items that flow straight into tracked tasks — so decisions don't stall after the meeting.

Compliance & obligations

Recurring duties on a calendar with proof-before-done gates, and bank-statement reconciliation against expected obligations.

Distributions & approvals

Sign-offs that follow the trust's own approval structure, so nothing consequential moves without the right authority.

Wills & succession

Will drafting and a registration workflow with state-aware guidance. (Aadhaar e-sign is planned, pending provider selection.)

A real experience for families

Families get more than a folder of documents. A native mobile app and a web portal give them a secure document vault, WhatsApp-style chat with the team (files both ways, permanent history), and visibility appropriate to their role — part of the switching cost that keeps a family with the firm rather than an individual.

Governance & continuity

Least-privilege by default — so continuity is a control, not a promise.

  • Role-based access, with each team member scoped to only the families and engagements they're assigned
  • Confidential roles are never exposed to families
  • Access and document activity are audited; bulk exports are flagged and throttled
  • Offboarding is one action — access is revoked immediately, with a record of what was touched

How it's different

Mnerva looked hard at how families are served elsewhere before designing Terentia's approach:

vs. spreadsheets & individual know-how

The method, decision rules and history live in the platform — so the firm keeps its knowledge when people move on.

vs. mass-market DIY will tools

Terentia goes beyond a will document into ongoing trust setup, governance, compliance and distributions — the work incumbents handle poorly.

vs. co-branded partner portals

A true white-label experience under the firm's own brand — depth, not a co-branded page on someone else's site.

Intelligence carries the operating load; people keep the relationships and the judgement.

Why this matters

In a relationship business, the risk isn't effort — it's that the most valuable knowledge is invisible and mobile. By making that knowledge a shared, governed asset, Terentia is designed to let the firm grow with confidence: junior staff can operate the system, principals stay the trusted faces, and families stay because the whole record and experience live with the firm.

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