Ensure your client’s family never has to say ‘If only I had known’

As financial advisors, we help clients focus on investment strategies, wealth creation and death benefits. We shouldn’t stop there, though. When a client dies without their affairs in order, it leaves families in chaos while they’re grieving.

Take for example Dianne, who was the founder and CEO of a major fashion line. When she died at the age of 43, her partner, Lee, was understandably grief-stricken. What Lee didn’t realize was that the grieving process was just the beginning of his troubles.

While Dianne provided generously for Lee in her will, she had not given Lee a copy of her will, nor had she shared information about her attorney and accountant handling her estate. It took Lee weeks of stressful research to track down this important information.

Dianne could have spared him much stress and anguish if she had prepared and shared a list of key contacts.

To help your client’s family, ask your client to assemble a written master list with complete contact information of key people and update it annually. The people on the master list will fall into two separate groups.

Group 1: The inner circle, the people who help decide what to do

Learn more ways to protect clients from Michaela Scott in her MDRT Annual Meeting presentation, “If only I had known.”

These are the people who will help your client set priorities and get their affairs in order while there is still time to do so, and who will be there to help carry out their wishes once the client dies. These are the people who know your client, understand their intentions and have earned their trust.

Group 2: The professionals whose advice, insights and services your client relies on to plan and execute final wishes

Estate planning involves many professional disciplines, including the areas of wills, trusts, insurance, bookkeeping and accounting, business planning, and the tax implications of gifts and bequests. You might not find one individual who can handle all these areas. Based on the personal situation and the complexity of assets, a professional estate planning team may be necessary.

The captain of the team is the client, but they may opt to have one professional from the above list whose insights and advice they trust implicitly and whose guidance they seek before making any major decisions. Clients need confidence in why they need to work with qualified professionals and how to do so. We need to build our centers of influence to create that network of trusted professionals on behalf of our clients.

Michaela Scott, CFP, MSFS, has been an MDRT member since 2015 and is a Court of the Table qualifier. She’s a strategic benefits consultant for Borislow Insurance in Methuen, Massachusetts, USA.

This was excerpted from Scott’s 2019 Annual Meeting Focus Session, which MDRT members can find online as well as her client planning forms.  You can find other 2019 MDRT Annual Meeting presentations online as well.