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Alzheimer’ s: The Nightmare Advisors Can’ t Avoid
If your advisory client gets this diagnosis, you could play a bigger role than you know. By Eric Rasmussen
ALZHEIMER’ S IS AN INSIDIOUS DISEASE, ONE THAT robs a person of their faculties slowly, erases pieces of them over time. It’ s a disease that works slowly— until it works suddenly, when a patient’ s capacity for making important decisions or recognizing relationships starts to quickly deteriorate.
You might notice after a while that one of your clients is merely repeating themselves. But then they might insist they’ ve had conversations with you that they haven’ t. They might forget faces more often, forget who their doctors or advisors or family members are.
If you’ re a financial advisor to someone starting to show signs of dementia, your role might not only change— but become singularly important. After all, your clients might share things with you they don’ t with family members, and lawyers often have legal restrictions that keep them from putting themselves in the middle of family planning discussions. Attorney-client privilege keeps them from sharing some information. Who’ s left? You, the financial advisor.
There are a lot of things to coordinate at this point— power of attorney, managed healthcare and even small details like forgotten internet passwords. Wills that might be difficult to change later need to be updated quickly. And all this has to be done with a certain amount of care and nuance, lest financial institutions get suspicious that a concerned family member is taking advantage of an elderly customer. Banks will red-flag the activity if they think an advisor or family member is using undue influence to move an impaired client’ s money.
If your client’ s Alzheimer’ s diagnosis is caught early, there’ s still time for them to make important decisions while the symptoms are mild( or even just waxing or waning). Lara Gatz, a Miami-based partner at law firm Reed Smith, says the diagnosis needs to be shared with the whole family— so different members can decide what roles they are going to play in the care.
Many family members likely assume that all this work is simply going to fall into the lap of the client’ s estate planning attorney, who will take care of everything. Not so, says Craig M. Parker, an assistant general counsel at Trust & Will, a service that provides estate planning documents to consumers and advisors. In fact, some attorneys likely won’ t want to work on an estate plan with someone who has Alzheimer’ s. They’ re taking on a risk of trouble, and attorney-client privilege shackles them.
“ Just sitting and observing and saying [ the client ] has an attorney and so I know it’ s taken care of is not
JUNE 2025 | FINANCIAL ADVISOR MAGAZINE | 49