Michael Walther was on the fast track in Arthur Andersen's personal financial planning practice, close to making partner even, in 2002. He didn't make it, though, because Andersen blew up that summer under the weight of its problems with an auditing client, Enron Corp.

I met Walther online when he sent me an e-mail about a column I wrote for Financial Advisor magazine in October 2010 about financial advisors who ignore conventional advice and set up the practices they want. Walther liked the column because it mirrored what he'd done in his own practice. And I was interested in his story for a couple of reasons: the way he used the lessons he'd learned growing up with a special needs brother to put together a practice to help others, and the resources he gathered to make Oak Wealth Advisors, a one-man shop in Deerfield, Ill., appear to be a big business.

Walther, who earned an MBA from Vanderbilt University, interned at Arthur Andersen where he helped set up the personal financial planning division. These divisions were cropping up at the biggest accounting firms in the late 1980s. Walther then worked in the PFS operation at Andersen from 1994 to 2002. "We had a pretty strong little niche business," Walther recalls. "But inside a large organization, we didn't make a blip."

Still, personal financial advice was starting to become big business.  But in June 2002, Arthur Andersen announced it would no
longer include a registered investment advisor and would lift out the personal financial planning practice with $2.7 billion of assets under management. Over 95% of the Andersen clients moved to the new firm. Business was good, but Walther, who is a CFP, CPA and CFA, as well as a member of the Personal Financial Services division of the American Institute for Certified Public Accountants, longed to return to his passion for working with families with special needs.

Then in 2007, his wife Beverly, a tenured professor at the Kellogg Business School of Northwestern University, developed "severe breast cancer" and Walther found himself with too many personal and professional balls to juggle.

The family survived that crisis and Beverly Walther told her husband that she could see he wasn't happy with his work. The two met when both were working on their MBAs at Vanderbilt. Beverly went on to get her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. She loved teaching managerial and cost and accounting at Northwestern. And she said to Walther: "You're not really happy. Why don't you quit?"

Walther agreed that he felt stuck. "I wasn't changing someone's life by helping them to grow their $25 million to $30 million," he says.

In December 2008, Walther opened his own advisory business in an office a couple of minutes away from his home. When I called him one day in December 2010, a professional-sounding woman answered the phone. I asked for Michael Walther. She said she would check to see if he was in. While I waited, I listened to a blast of great jazz music and then Walther picked up the phone. He told me later that this was part of a service he set up when he started his own firm to make his one-person firm seem more professional and credible.

That's one of the reasons he liked my column in FA: "I have found it odd that we as advisors are constantly being told to go deeper with clients and help them with the issues in their life that mean the most to them," Walther writes. "At the same time, the experts are telling financial advisors that they should be constantly doing more business development and only focusing on the most profitable niches. Your piece does a great job focusing on advisor satisfaction."

When I talked with him, he said: "Most people think that the person at the large firm looks much more credible." What gives him the most satisfaction in his new business is his ability to focus on special needs families. Walther, who is 43, has a very close relationship with his brother, Sean, 41. When the boys were growing up, it was clear to the family that Sean had developmental problems, although it was not until he was in his thirties that Sean was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome.

Sean was in the fortunate position of "having two parents who loved him so much that they threw everything they had at his developmental issues," Walther says. For example, his father is past president of the St. Louis March of Dimes. The family became interested in autism when they saw Rain Man, a 1988 film about a selfish yuppie who discovers his autistic brother, Raymond, when their father leaves the bulk of his estate to the brother. The film traces the developing relationship between the two brothers. Walther says Sean is a savant in some ways, like Raymond in Rain Man. And the relationship between the two brothers reminded him of Sean and himself.

Walther got a good education and piled up some savings and wanted to give back. Although his own parents did everything they could for Sean, they still made mistakes simply because they weren't aware of the legal ramifications of a special needs child. "For me, it was a lot of seeing what my family did right and wrong," Walther says.

Too many families in this situation have a short-term outlook, which Walther says is understandable because a special needs child requires so many "right-away" decisions about health care and education. "They have to deal with therapy, school meetings and balancing the needs of other children in the family," he says. While fulfilling these requirements, many don't understand that they must also be teaching the child skills he will need to become as independent as possible and qualifying the child for Medicaid.
As special needs children grow, different things must be done at different ages. For example, when the child is aged 14 to 21, the parents need to focus him on skills such as getting dressed by himself, using a microwave and so forth. When he turns 21, he will desperately need those skills, particularly if the family has not gotten him qualified for Medicaid. "The government says that at 21, you are on your own unless you qualify for Medicaid," Walther says, adding that "Medicaid eligibility should not be viewed negatively."

Every special needs child should be qualified. A person who qualifies for Medicaid may still have other health insurance, he said. But the special needs child still needs Medicaid because if a parent loses a job or becomes disabled, he or she may not be able to provide health insurance for the child.

The autism community can also be a strong support system, he says. "One percent of children born today are autistic," he adds. "The social system required to support that is unbelievable."

Every special needs person is different, Walther explains. "A child with Down syndrome is first a child and then a Down syndrome child," he says. "You can't put all special needs clients in one bucket. I serve like a therapist for families, helping them sort through these issues."

Walther estimates that only a handful of fee planners serve special needs families. Many attorneys are skeptical of his specialty because they've had too many experiences with advisors who have no real expertise in dealing with these families. These advisors put all special needs clients into one bucket and try to sell them insurance, for example.

Walther uses only fees, but he imposes them in different ways. About 40% of his clients are special needs clients. Some families pay assets-under-management fees and receive full financial planning services, he says. But for some families "that doesn't make sense," he argues, so he often charges quarterly planning fees, which total about $5,000 a year. And, of course, for many families that's not doable either. So he does some pro bono work and provides answers to common questions on his Web site. He also sometimes takes phone calls from needy families.

When he appears at speaking engagements, Walther says it generates a lot of interest in his services and he often must turn families away because he can't serve them all. Roughly 10% of the population has a family member with special needs. One client who's been with Walther for six or seven years, recently told him that her grandson has Down syndrome.

Because he wants to have all his time available to work with clients, Walther uses Schwab Portfolio Services. He also has a team at Schwab. When he set up his business he drew up a list of ten things he needed to have done for him. Schwab Portfolio Services provides these things, including daily downloads, reconciliations and performance reporting.

Most special needs children fall between the cracks, Walther says. "There is no credential in financial planning for special needs. I've been in touch with the IAFP, AICPA and the CFP board to at least set up an affinity group. I'd be happy to lead it."   

Mary Rowland can be reached at [email protected]. She has been a business and personal finance journalist for 30 years and has written two books for financial advisors: Best Practices and In Search of the Perfect Model.