If these meetings with the new partner don’t go well, we become the enemy. It’s worse if the client is less sure of herself and the new partner is controlling. The client can be taken advantage of.
If you find yourself in this situation, it may be best to take yourself out of it. Be the enemy and help the client find a planner with whom she can start a new relationship. The new planner will not have had the history with the original client, who’s now gone, so the new partner may be more comfortable and trusting with the new advisor.
This is not as ideal as maintaining the client relationship, but it gives the client a better chance of a good outcome than she’d have turning over everything to the new partner.
Another common situation is that clients choose to leave you because their adult children are taking over their finances. We often have family meetings with clients, and we usually know the adult children and have relationships with them. We value these multigenerational conversations—it’s important that we make decisions about, say, whether the children will want to keep the family cabin; or what’s the best way for them to gift; or how to establish trusts, powers of attorney and health-care directives. Mostly, the children value these discussions and like the openness and engagement.
But there have been a few times when the adult children do not see things the same way we do. It is tempting to create motives for them, but that is not as useful as helping the clients make the best possible decisions they can. If an adult child has undue influence over his or her parents and we are at odds with the child, it is probably not healthy for our relationship to continue.
We may try to have a family meeting with all siblings first to share in the parent’s wishes, but this may not be possible. We would ideally want the client to end up with another planner, but there are times when the child wants to take on that responsibility. Before we end the relationship, we might ideally try to closely engage an estate planning attorney to help ensure the client’s best interests are being considered.
The ability to help clients when they no longer want our help may be one of the most important things we can do. We can continue this discussion on June 11th!
Ross Levin, CFP, is the founder and chief executive officer of Accredited Investors in Edina, Minn. He can be reached at [email protected].