Category: The Wealth Counselor

People often accumulate personal belongings over time, from everyday items to sentimental keepsakes. While these possessions may seem harmless, they can complicate estate planning, slow administration, and create difficult decisions for heirs if not proactively addressed. 

Advisors do not need to tackle these issues alone or impose drastic changes on clients. Instead, they can provide guidance and tools that help clients organize, document, and plan for their personal property in a way that preserves both value and family relationships. 

The goal is to make the process manageable and collaborative, enabling clients to take control of their estate without feeling judged or pressured.

How to Address Personal Property Planning with Clients

Advisors rarely benefit from asking blunt questions such as, “Do you have too much stuff?” Such phrasing can feel judgmental and is difficult for clients to answer objectively. Instead, the conversation should focus on anticipating potential estate planning challenges and identifying practical steps that the client can take to better manage their personal property.

Financial advisors can approach the topic in a planning-focused way, using observations and client cues to guide the conversation. Emphasizing organization, documentation, and clarity can support the client’s estate plan, reduce the administrative burden, and help heirs manage personal property more efficiently. 

The strategies below provide practical ways for advisors to raise the issue sensitively and collaboratively. 

Start with neutral, planning-focused questions. Instead of focusing directly on a client’s living environment, advisors can incorporate some of the following questions about personal property into broader planning discussions: 

• Do you have any collections, valuables, or unique personal property that should be accounted for in your estate plan?
• Are any of your belongings stored in multiple locations, such as storage units or second homes?
• Would it be easy for someone else to identify and access important items or documents if needed?
• Do you anticipate that managing or distributing your personal property could take significant time or coordination? 

These types of questions can help to reveal potential challenges and guide the conversation toward appropriate planning strategies. 

Encourage documentation and basic organization. When clients acknowledge having a significant amount of personal property, advisors can focus the conversation on organization and clarity rather than reduction. Suggested steps for clients include:

• Creating a basic inventory of valuable or meaningful items
• Using photos or written lists to document what exists and where it is located
• Coordinating with estate planning counsel to document how specific items should be distributed, when appropriate

Framing these steps in terms of efficiency and clarity can help clients understand the benefit to their heirs and the overall administration of their estate. 

Emphasize ease of administration for family members. Position planning as a way to simplify responsibilities for heirs and fiduciaries. Highlighting the impact on others, instead of the client’s habits, can make the conversation feel more constructive and less judgmental. Advisors can reinforce this approach through the following client conversations:

• Discussing how organizing personal property now can reduce the burden on family members and fiduciaries later
• Focusing on minimizing confusion, delays, and potential conflict during estate administration
• Presenting organization as a best practice for ensuring that the client’s intentions are carried out efficiently

For receptive clients, advisors may also consider sharing relevant data points or educational resources to reinforce the importance of planning and provide additional context. 

Suggest involving outside professionals when appropriate. As conversations progress, advisors can introduce the idea of coordinating with an estate planning attorney to address legal documentation such as wills, trusts, and provisions governing personal property. In addition, advisors may suggest other professionals who can assist with the practical aspects of managing and organizing belongings, including any of the following: 

• Senior move managers
• Estate sale professionals
• Professional organizers and cleanout services

Framing these resources as a part of a coordinated planning approach can help clients see their value. When appropriately positioned, these professionals can reduce stress, save time, and support more-efficient estate administration. 

Document the conversation. Advisors should document discussions regarding personal property and estate planning, particularly when potential risks or client preferences are identified: 

• Create a record of known risks related to personal property
• Preserve the client’s stated intentions regarding belongings
• Clarify the guidance provided and the scope of the advisor’s role

Thoughtful documentation supports continuity across the planning process. It can provide fiduciaries with a clearer starting point, reduce the likelihood of misunderstandings among heirs, and help ensure that key decisions are not overlooked or forgotten. 

Know when to involve an attorney. Advisors should use their judgment to determine the right time to suggest consulting an estate planning attorney. Planning discussions must eventually translate into actionable steps, but clients who are hesitant or unprepared may need additional time or a different approach before engaging legal counsel. 

Some clients may already recognize that accumulated personal property can complicate estate administration and understand that important decisions will eventually need to be made. Even if no family disputes have arisen yet, clients are often aware that disorganization can create challenges for heirs and fiduciaries. 

By identifying potential risks and guiding clients toward practical solutions, whether through organization, documentation, or professional coordination, advisors can help clients make informed decisions, reduce future administrative burdens, and support smoother estate planning outcomes. 

Many clients have accumulated belongings over decades, from everyday items to family heirlooms, which can create significant challenges for their heirs and fiduciaries. What may feel manageable during a client’s lifetime can become complex and time-consuming after they pass. 

When a home contains a large volume of personal property, organizing and distributing items can create both logistical and emotional hurdles for family members. Advisors may encounter situations in which heirs are uncertain about what to keep, what to donate, and how to handle valuable or sentimental items. 

The responsibility for managing a client’s personal property typically falls to relatives or fiduciaries. Without proactive planning, excessive accumulated belongings can result in delays, higher administrative costs, and potential disputes—complications that often become apparent only during estate administration. 

America Has a Clutter Problem

An oft-cited statistic claims that the average American home has 300,000 items in it.¹ Though that number has been disputed, there is no debate that Americans own a great deal of stuff:  

• 25 percent of Americans admit to having a “clutter problem”² 
• 84 percent worry that their homes are not organized enough³
• 55 percent say that clutter is a major cause of stress⁴

Yet the urge to accumulate is not a particularly American “problem.” Humans are predisposed to accumulate, in part because we evolved under conditions of scarcity.⁵ It is the same reason we have trouble denying ourselves fats and sweets; our brains crave unnecessary items the way they crave unhealthy food.⁶ Research also suggests that objects appeal to us on an emotional level, giving us a sense of security and connection to the past and to the people we love.⁷ 

Meaning, however, is subjective. Physical items may be tied to memory and identity in ways that are not easily discernible.⁸ When family members begin sorting and packing up belongings from a home during estate administration, issues can arise that far exceed any given item’s size, weight, or monetary value.

Fiduciaries’ Challenges of Managing Excessive Personal Property

Administering an estate is inherently time-consuming, and personal property often adds complexity. Excessive belongings can amplify these challenges, increasing both fiduciary workload and risk. Key considerations for advisors to anticipate include: 

• Time and emotional demands. Sorting through a home with extensive personal property can be a considerable effort, especially when heirs are grieving. Executors and trustees may spend evenings and weekends reviewing documents, coordinating cleanouts, and making decisions about items with little financial value but great emotional significance.
• Disputes among heirs. Unlike financial assets, household items often carry sentimental value, making division challenging. Multiple heirs may claim the same items, leading to disagreements over fairness.
• Subjective value of items. Objects with little monetary worth, such as tools, furniture, or keepsakes, may have deep personal meaning, increasing the likelihood of conflict and complicating equitable distribution.
• Perceived bias. Fiduciaries are expected to act impartially. Decisions about personal property may be interpreted as favoritism, potentially leading to grievances or strained relationships.
• Legal and relational risks. In extreme cases, disagreements over personal possessions can lead to litigation. Even in the absence of legal action, disputes over personal belongings can still damage family relationships and create lingering resentment.

Although personal property may seem trivial, it can have real consequences for heirs and fiduciaries. Disputes over belongings, even ones of modest monetary value, can cause delays, increase administrative costs, and strain family relationships. Advisors who recognize these risks can help clients take proactive steps to organize, document, and communicate their intentions, reducing potential complications and supporting smoother estate administration. 

1. Jean Chatzky, One in Four Americans Has a Clutter Problem — And Could Be Sitting on Some Serious Cash, NBC News (May 31, 2017), https://www.nbcnews.com/business/personal-finance/one-four-americans-has-clutter-problem-could-be-sitting-some-n766681. ↩︎
2. Id. ↩︎
3. Id. ↩︎
4. Id. ↩︎
5. Archana Ram, Why Do We Keep Buying New Stuff?, Patagonia (Nov. 15, 2023), https://www.patagonia.com/stories/culture/design/feeling-like-new/story-144207.html. ↩︎
6. Id. ↩︎
7. Christian Jarrett, The psychology of stuff and things, The British Psych. Soc’y (Aug. 13, 2013), https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/psychology-stuff-and-things. ↩︎
8. Christopher R. Madan, Memory Can Define Individual Beliefs and Identity—and Shape Society, Sage J. (Dec. 13, 2023), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23727322231220258. ↩︎

Comedian George Carlin once joked that a house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more. “Sometimes you gotta move, gotta get a bigger house,” he said. “Why? No room for your stuff anymore.”¹

Although humorous, Carlin’s observation highlights a real issue that advisors encounter: Many clients accumulate more belongings over time than they or their heirs can easily manage. What seems manageable during a client’s lifetime can become a source of stress, logistical challenges, and financial consequences for heirs and fiduciaries after the client’s death. 

Excessive personal belongings can complicate estate administration, delay liquidation or probate, and sometimes interfere with safe aging in place. Recognizing the potential impact of accumulation early can help financial advisors guide clients toward solutions that protect both their estate plan and their loved ones. 

The “Great Wealth Transfer” Is Also a “Great Stuff Transfer”

Over the next few decades, an estimated $84 trillion in assets will change hands from the Silent Generation and baby boomers to Gen X and millennial heirs.² The “Great Wealth Transfer” is poised to reshape the global economy through how that wealth is spent and invested. 

But a more immediate and open-ended question is what happens to all the physical possessions, the decades of accumulated stuff, that are transferred with that wealth.

As the “Great Stuff Transfer” gets underway, media outlets are describing the burden it can place on family members.³ Baby boomers have very high homeownership rates⁴ and have spent decades filling their homes with stuff: silverware, furniture, fine china, platters, baseball cards, model trains, figurines, firearms, and trinkets from their travels. 

As our homes have gotten bigger,⁵ so have the mounds of stuff in—and outside of—them: Americans now rent more than 2 billion square feet of self-storage space.⁶

When someone downsizes or dies, their belongings must go somewhere. While their kids and grandkids may not want the belongings, they may still be stuck sorting through them. Some items may be worth something, but separating trash from treasure is not easy.

There are also hidden risks and costs buried beneath the piles: the financial and estate planning fallout that an avalanche of excessive belongings can trigger. 

Why Being “Stuff-Blind” Can Complicate Estate Administration

“Nose blindness” occurs when the brain becomes so accustomed to a constant scent that it stops registering the odor.⁷ A similar phenomenon can happen with possessions. Over time, people can develop “clutter blindness,” gradually losing awareness of how much they have accumulated.⁸

Accumulating items over time and struggling to let go of personal possessions is normal. But when excessive belongings accumulate over a lifetime, they can become a blind spot in financial, estate, and long-term care planning. Potential complications include the following:

• Missed or undiscovered assets. Valuable items such as jewelry, collectibles, cash, or important financial records may be hidden among everyday belongings. Family members or executors under time pressure may overlook items or mistake them for nonessential clutter.
• Probate delays. Probate can take six to 12 months or longer, depending on the estate. Decades of accumulated personal property can extend this timeline by weeks or months, because sorting, cataloging, and distributing such property is often time-consuming.
• Valuation inaccuracies. Personal property is typically appraised based on its date-of-death value. Disorganized homes make it difficult for appraisers to locate and identify items, increasing the risk of incomplete inventories or inaccurate valuations.
• Higher administrative costs. Professional estate cleanout services can cost $500 to $3,000, with heavily cluttered homes exceeding $6,000 depending on the size of the property and volume of belongings.⁹ In larger estates, identifying and cataloging personal property can add $2,000 to $10,000 in administrative costs, not including junk removal, estate sale, or auctioneer fees.
• Real estate liquidation delays. Often, homes cannot be listed for sale until the contents have been removed. Preparing a home for an estate sale typically takes two to four weeks; heavily cluttered properties can require additional professional cleanout time. Such delays can extend the selling timeline and increase carrying costs, including utilities, insurance, and property taxes.

Extreme accumulation may also signal broader planning risks:

• Aging in place may no longer be safe. Most older adults want to age at home,¹⁰ but their house must be able to safely accommodate them as they grow older. Severe clutter can create fall hazards, block exits, and interfere with basic home maintenance. When a home becomes unsafe, it may undermine plans to age in place and force families to reconsider housing or long-term care arrangements.
• Potential changes in cognitive function. A growing inability to manage household possessions may signal cognitive decline that could also affect financial management.
• Difficulty locating essential documents. Important records such as wills, trusts, insurance policies, account statements, passwords, and other key documents may be misplaced or buried among household belongings, complicating estate administration and financial decisions after death.

While clients cannot take their belongings with them when they pass away, those items can have real implications for their heirs and on the administration of their estates. Financial advisors who recognize the potential challenges of accumulated personal property can help clients plan proactively, minimizing delays, reducing administrative costs, and ensuring that both assets and personal property are handled according to the client’s wishes.

1.  George Carlin – Stuff, The Frug (July 13), https://thefrug.com/george-carlin-stuff. ↩︎
2.  Cerulli Anticipates $84 Trillion in Wealth Transfers Through 2045, Cerulli Assocs. (Jan. 20, 2022), https://www.cerulli.com/press-releases/cerulli-anticipates-84-trillion-in-wealth-transfers-through-2045. ↩︎
3.  Richard Eisenberg, Sorry, Your Kids Don’t Want Your Stuff or Your Parents’ Stuff, Next Avenue (Jan. 6, 2026), https://www.nextavenue.org/sorry-your-kids-dont-want-your-stuff-of-your-parents-stuff. ↩︎
4.  Baby Boomers Regain Top Spot as Largest Share of Home Buyers, Nat’l Ass’n of Realtors (Apr. 1, 2025), https://www.nar.realtor/newsroom/baby-boomers-regain-top-spot-as-largest-share-of-home-buyers. ↩︎
5.  Taylor Covington, Supersized: Americans Are Living in Bigger Houses With Fewer People, The Zebra (May 15, 2024), https://www.thezebra.com/resources/home/median-home-size-in-us/. ↩︎
6.  Al Harris, U.S. Self-Storage Industry Statistics in 2026, SpareFoot (Mar. 9, 2026), https://www.sparefoot.com/blog/self-storage-industry-statistics. ↩︎
7.  The Science Behind Olfactory Fatigue, Malibu Apothecary (Sept. 17, 2025), https://malibuapothecary.com/blogs/clean-candles/the-science-behind-olfactory-fatigue-why-you-stop-smelling-a-scent. ↩︎
8.  Gretchen Rubin, Are You Clutter-Blind? Or Do You Know Someone Who Is?, Psych. Today (May 16, 2016), https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-happiness-project/201605/are-you-clutter-blind-or-do-you-know-someone-who-is. ↩︎
9.  Deirdre Sullivan, How Much Do Estate Cleanout Services Cost? [2026 Data], Angi (Apr. 4, 2026), https://www.angi.com/articles/estate-cleanout-services-cost.htm. ↩︎
10.  Kim Parker and Luona Lin, Most older adults who live at home want to age in place, but they aren’t entirely confident they’ll get to, Pew Rsch. (Feb. 26, 2026), https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/02/26/most-older-adults-who-live-at-home-want-to-age-in-place-but-they-arent-entirely-confident-theyll-get-to. ↩︎

One way to manage long-term care risk is through a dedicated insurance policy. Long-term care insurance (LTCI) covers care at home or in assisted living, memory care, or nursing facilities—services that standard health insurance and Medicare do not typically pay for.

Although roughly 70 percent of people turning 65 will need some form of long-term care services in their remaining years, fewer than 5 percent of Americans aged 50 and older currently hold an LTCI policy.¹ Why is the uptake so low?

Given the high potential costs of LTC, a policy may seem like an obvious solution. Yet the contraction of the LTCI market over recent decades highlights that it is a targeted planning tool. For advisors, therefore, it becomes important to identify which clients are appropriate candidates for LTCI and under what circumstances.

What to Know About LTCI: An Advisor’s Primer

Two major factors tell the story of LTCI over the years: price and complexity.

Long-term care insurance was created to bridge the gap left by Medicare for extended custodial care. Introduced in the late 1970s and 1980s in response to rising nursing home costs, LTCI later expanded to include home health and assisted living coverage.

Despite its original mass-market intent, the availability of traditional LTCI has shrunk dramatically, reflecting higher premiums, tighter underwriting, and fewer standalone offerings. Meanwhile, hybrid products have gained traction.

Advisors should be aware of five key trends:

• Decline of traditional LTCI. Most insurers have stopped selling standalone LTCI due to high costs and pricing challenges, prompting carriers to raise premiums or exit the market.²
• Growth of hybrid or linked-benefit products. Combination life/LTC products now dominate the market,³ offering dual value: care protection and a death benefit. These products may appeal more to younger clients, especially family caregivers.
• Premiums and underwriting constraints. Conservative pricing and stricter health requirements make eligibility and long-term affordability central planning considerations.
• Coverage gaps. Many policies, especially older or narrowly designed ones, do not cover all the care clients may expect, leading to potential out-of-pocket expenses.
• Increased product complexity. Modern LTCI products vary widely in structure, benefits, and cost, meaning that advisors must understand differences and not assume policy parity.

These trends underscore that LTCI is a strategic planning tool, not a default solution that applies to every situation. It can complement trusts and other asset protection strategies, helping preserve wealth and reduce care-related stress for clients and their families. It is not a planning panacea for every client, however, and should be evaluated case by case.

Who May Benefit from LTCI

LTCI may be worth evaluating for a client in the following circumstances:

• Has meaningful savings to protect from the high costs of prolonged medical assistance
• Wishes to preserve their estate for heirs rather than liquidating assets for healthcare
• Wants to guarantee that one spouse’s health crisis does not ruin the financial security of the other
• Aims to keep their overall retirement and investment plans running smoothly without interruption
• Is healthy enough to secure an insurance policy and financially stable enough to pay the premiums over the long term

Who May Not Benefit from LTCI

LTCI may be less appropriate for a client in the following circumstances:

• Has limited income to support the burden of continuous, multiyear premiums
• Is actively positioning their assets to qualify for Medicaid and other public support
• Has already secured their estate through dedicated self-funding methods or trusts
• Cannot pass strict medical evaluations or cannot afford the high premiums associated with their current health status
• Prioritizes immediate financial freedom over dedicating funds to a future insurance benefit

LTCI Considerations for Advisors

Once suitability is identified, advisors must evaluate policy design in light of the client’s estate documents, asset structure, and retirement income strategy.⁴ These are some key areas to evaluate:

• Premium cost versus opportunity cost. Do projected premiums justify the expected benefit relative to alternative uses of capital or liquidity needs?
• Benefit duration. Does the policy’s benefit period align with realistic care timelines, including the possibility of multiyear or indefinite dependency?
• Inflation protection. Will benefits retain purchasing power over time? What if care is needed decades from now at rates far above today’s assumptions?
• Elimination periods. Can the client comfortably self-fund care during waiting periods before benefits begin?
• Policy flexibility and structure. Are benefit triggers, daily or monthly caps, and covered care settings aligned with how the client would realistically receive (or prefer to receive) care?
• Family dynamics. Can dedicated funding reduce stress on spouses or children who may face caregiving or financial decision-making pressure?
• Ongoing review. As health needs, markets, and family circumstances evolve, does the policy remain aligned with the client’s estate and retirement objectives?
• Coordination with legal planning. Does the policy complement existing trusts, powers of attorney, and asset protection strategies without duplicating or conflicting with them?

Building Long-Term Partnerships for Clients’ Long-Term Care

Long-term care is becoming an increasingly common reality as Americans live longer and retirement timelines extend past what many originally anticipated.

Changes in the LTCI market have introduced new products that can help address gaps in Medicare coverage and reduce reliance on family caregivers. But these solutions are not perfect and are far from one-size-fits-all.

Whether LTCI is right for a client comes down to careful analysis within the broader context of their financial, retirement, and estate plans. By approaching long-term care planning with a long-term perspective, advisors reinforce that they are at their clients’ side throughout the aging and retirement journey—whatever path it may take and whatever solutions it ultimately demands.

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1. Janet Weiner, Reforming Long-Term Care Policy: Lessons from the Past, Imperatives for the Future, Penn LDI (Dec. 4, 2025), https://ldi.upenn.edu/our-work/research-updates/reforming-long-term-care-policy. ↩︎
2. LIMRA, Hybrid Insurance on the Rise: A New Era for Long-Term Care Protection: LIMRA/EY US Individual Life Combination LTC Survey 2 (2025), https://www.ey.com/content/dam/ey-unified-site/ey-com/en-us/insights/insurance/documents/ey-hybrid-insurance-on-the-rise-a-new-era-for-long-term-care-protection.pdf. ↩︎
3. Is Life Insurance the Answer to the Growing Long-Term Care Need in the U.S.?, LIMRA (Aug. 28, 2025), https://www.limra.com/en/newsroom/industry-trends/2025/is-life-insurance-the-answer-to-the-growing-long-term-care-need-in-the-u.s. ↩︎
4. What Features of Long-Term Care Policies Should I Focus On?, Ins. Info. Inst., https://www.iii.org/article/what-features-long-term-care-policies-should-i-focus (last visited Mar. 31, 2026). ↩︎

Long-term care needs can introduce significant risk to a client’s estate and financial plan. Advisors should take a layered approach, integrating strategies that address private-pay options and potential public benefits while preserving client objectives.

Not all long-term care risks or planning needs are the same, so asset protection strategies must be evaluated in the context of a client’s health, family, and broader estate, financial, and legacy goals while maintaining flexibility to navigate the uncertainties of long-term care and the current economic environment.

What Are the Goals of Long-Term Care Planning?

The effectiveness of a long-term care (LTC) plan is measured by how well it achieves the client’s objectives. Advisors typically have the following key goals:

• Protect a spouse’s standard of living. Ensure that one partner’s long-term financial security is not compromised by the other’s long-term care needs
• Preserve legacy intentions for heirs. Help clients maintain intergenerational wealth and fulfill estate planning objectives despite potential long-term care expenses
• Maintain care choices and independence. Equip clients with the financial flexibility to dictate the terms, setting, and style of their care, ensuring that their independence remains intact
• Integrate LTC planning with retirement and investment strategy. Consider LTC risk alongside asset allocation, withdrawal strategies, and broader financial goals
• Minimize reliance on family. Reduce the financial, emotional, and logistical burden on family members by planning proactively

What Are the Main LTC Planning Strategies?

Planning for long-term care requires creating a clear strategy to protect a client’s savings from the high costs of in-home help, assisted living, or nursing homes. While some steps may look similar to setting up a standard will or trust, planning for long-term care demands a distinct focus. Advisors and clients must separately evaluate these risks and choose specific solutions to ensure ongoing financial security.

Transfer Private Risks to Policies

Traditional long-term care insurance (LTCI) and hybrid life policies allow clients to shift the heavy burden of care costs away from their personal savings. By transferring this risk to an insurance company, clients gain a dedicated safety net and enjoy the following key benefits:

• Shielding retirement funds and investment accounts from sudden, forced sales
• Securing a pool of money for care that often far exceeds the premiums paid
• Establishing a predictable and reliable source of funding during an extended health event

However, LTCI is not a universal solution. Underwriting requirements, premium stability, long-term affordability, and policy structure must all be carefully evaluated. For clients who qualify and are able to afford premiums, these policies can meaningfully reduce asset exposure and serve as a key layer in a broader LTC planning strategy.

Self-Funding and Asset Management

Some clients elect to self-fund long-term care costs, which requires intentional asset positioning and coordination across the financial plan. Key considerations include the following:

• Designating LTC reserves. Set aside specific savings or brokerage accounts to cover potential care expenses
• Evaluating retirement account withdrawals. Sequence distributions to maintain liquidity and tax efficiency
• Maintaining sufficient liquidity. Ensure that clients can fund care without forced or ill-timed asset sales

Paying for care out of pocket is a strong option for clients who possess enough wealth to sustain multiple years of large expenses without putting their retirement lifestyle or family legacy at risk. To correctly execute this strategy, the advisory team must carefully align the client’s estate plan with their investment choices and expected income streams.

Public Benefits Planning

While Medicaid is the primary funding source for extended care, strict financial limits often force individuals to spend down their life savings before receiving help. By integrating public benefits into an overall financial strategy early, advisors can help clients secure necessary care while shielding private wealth. Important planning considerations include the following:

• Understanding exact financial limits and the strict timeline the government uses to review past financial gifts
• Restructuring wealth to seamlessly align with federal and state rules for asset transfers
• Utilizing specific regulations designed to protect the financial well-being of a healthy spouse

Proactively addressing these public benefit rules is essential. Reactive planning during a medical emergency severely limits the choices available to clients and creates significant financial vulnerability.

Asset Protection Structures

Irrevocable trusts and other asset protection strategies can insulate assets from potential long-term care spend-down, but they generally must be implemented well in advance.

Where appropriate, advisors may focus on the following:

• Proactive funding. Transferring assets into secure trusts well before an individual requires daily assistance
• Strategic structuring. Designing the trust to align perfectly with the strict eligibility guidelines of public benefit programs such as Medicaid
• Agent alignment. Coordinating financial power of attorney documents with the trust so that trusted agents can manage the protected funds safely and legally without breaking the protective seal of the trust

Effective asset protection planning requires early implementation and careful coordination. Timing is critical, and late-stage planning significantly limits available options and reduces planning flexibility.

Family Coordination

Long-term care often involves family coordination, whether for caregiving, decision-making, or managing eligibility for public benefits.¹ Even if a spend-down is not sought and care funding remains private, LTC affects more than just the recipient. Advisors can help families prepare for long-term care in the following ways:

• Confirm decision-making authority. Ensure that all family members know exactly who is designated to make medical and financial decisions if the client becomes incapacitated.
• Define caregiving roles. Clearly establish who will provide hands-on, day-to-day support versus who will handle administrative tasks such as coordinating services.
• Communicate expectations. The client shouldopenly discuss their care preferences and funding strategies so that everyone understands the overarching plan and their potential responsibilities.

Even the best financial and care strategies can falter if families are not on the same page. Proactive planning and coordination reduces uncertainty, minimizes conflict, and helps ensure that long-term plans work smoothly if and when care becomes necessary.

Right-Sizing LTC Planning

These long-term care strategies must be balanced with liquidity needs, control considerations, and overall estate planning objectives. Because LTC risk varies by client, each plan should be tailored to individual circumstances.

The broader picture can change over time as health, markets, or family circumstances shift. While plans may not need to be rebuilt from scratch, they may require periodic adjustments to maintain existing protections or implement new strategies.

When integrated early and reviewed regularly, LTC planning becomes a stabilizing element in a client’s estate plan, turning what could be a potentially disruptive risk into a manageable component of long-term wealth and legacy planning rather than a last-minute response to crisis.

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1. Common Caregiving Problems, Am. Psych. Ass’n (June 2020), https://www.apa.org/pi/about/publications/caregivers/practice-settings/common-problems. ↩︎

An effective plan for the future goes far beyond controlling and directing asset transfers at death. When structured properly, an estate plan also protects against incapacity during life, ensuring that a client’s medical and financial affairs can be managed without court intervention.

But one risk that many estate plans overlook is the potential need for long-term care (LTC). Long-term care is not a hypothetical risk; it is a predictable financial challenge that can upend a carefully crafted estate plan, drain savings, and place immense strain on families.

Unfortunately, clients often assume that they will not need care, and advisors frequently delay planning until a health crisis strikes. Treating the need for long-term care solely as an unlikely health risk rather than a predictable financial and estate planning vulnerability leaves plans dangerously exposed, potentially compromising assets and long-term objectives, even if the client regains their health.

Understanding Long-Term Care

To appreciate the risk that long-term care poses to an estate plan, it is helpful to review a few key considerations that may not have been fully addressed or considered with your clients.

What Is Long-Term Care?

Long-term care differs from standard incapacity planning because it is not necessarily tied to catastrophic injury, terminal illness, or total cognitive or physical loss. Instead, LTC addresses  functional dependency and the inability to perform basic activities of daily living (ADLs), including bathing, dressing, and moving safely from place to place. It typically encompasses the following types of care:

• In-home care
• Assisted living
• Memory care
• Skilled nursing facilities

The National Institute on Aging defines LTC as services designed to meet a person’s health or personal care needs when they can no longer independently perform everyday tasks.¹

Unlike short-term rehabilitation, LTC is generally custodial, focused on sustained assistance that may last months or years.

That distinction has important financial implications: Medicare generally does not cover long-term custodial care.² While it may pay for limited, short-term skilled nursing or rehabilitation following hospitalization, ongoing support for ADLs typically falls to clients, their families, or private insurance.

Who Typically Needs Long-Term Care?

According to the National Institutes of Health, the need for LTC can arise suddenly, such as after a heart attack or stroke, but more often develops gradually with age.³ While the exact timing and level of care that will be needed are difficult to precisely predict, the following underlying causes are relatively common and generally more foreseeable:

• Age-related frailty and declining mobility
• Cognitive impairment, including Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia
• Stroke and neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s disease
• Chronic illnesses such as diabetes or heart disease
• Injuries resulting in long-term functional limitations

As life expectancy increases, so does the likelihood of requiring care.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that nearly 70 percent of individuals turning age 65 today will need some form of long-term care during their remaining years.⁴

Women are more likely to require care for longer periods due to longer life expectancy—a factor that has implications for retirement and estate planning.

How Long Does Long-Term Care Normally Last?

Long-term care is not always permanent, but it is often prolonged. The average duration for individuals needing care is approximately three years.⁵ However, averages can obscure the more significant risk: Roughly one in five individuals requiring care will need it for five years or longer.⁶

From an advisory standpoint, duration matters. A short-term rehabilitation stay is one scenario, but a multiyear period of dependency—especially when it coincides with retirement withdrawals or limited income—can have material implications for both cash flow and estate planning.

What Does Long-Term Care Cost?

Costs vary by region and level of care, but national median estimates provide perspective⁷:

• The annual national median cost of a semiprivate nursing home room is about $114,975; a private room is about $129,575.
• Assisted living community care averages roughly $74,400 per year.
• Home-based care such as a home health aide runs around $35 per hour nationally.

These figures represent median costs at typical facilities and do not account for inflation, specialized memory care, or ancillary medical expenses. In higher-cost states such as California, rates can be significantly above the national median.⁸

Care costs continue to rise rapidly as labor costs and demand grow. For example, assisted living costs increased about 10 percent compared with the last year surveyed.⁹ Even modest annual increases can compound significantly over multiyear stays.

How Can Costs Affect Savings?

Long-term care can have a significant impact on a client’s financial plan. Even a few years of private-pay care can redirect assets toward care expenses, potentially reducing funds available for retirement income, lifestyle goals, or legacy planning.

To put this in perspective:

• Nursing home care can easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars over several years.
• Assisted living or graduated care facilities can be expensive and can consume a material portion of savings.

For many retirees, savings are intended to fund ongoing living expenses, supplement Social Security, and ultimately pass to heirs. Extended LTC expenses can quickly divert these assets, creating risk to both retirement and estate planning objectives.¹⁰

Why Traditional Estate Plans Do Not Address LTC Risk

Most estate plans are structured to achieve the following goals:

• Facilitate and direct asset transfers at death
• Minimize certain taxes
• Provide authority for medical and financial decisions during incapacity

However, these tools often assume that assets remain largely intact until death. LTC can introduce a lifetime risk that can quickly erode or deplete those assets, and standard estate planning documents are often not enough.

• Wills. Take effect only at death and provide no protection against LTC costs during life
• Revocable living trusts. Centralize asset management and avoid probate, but assets remain exposed to private-pay long-term care expenses
• Durable powers of attorney. Grant decision-making authority but do not shield assets from care costs

Even a well-constructed estate plan can be compromised if long-term care is not addressed. For advisors, the implication is clear: Integrating LTC planning into the broader estate and financial plan is essential to help clients preserve assets, protect spousal income, and maintain legacy intentions.

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1. What Is Long-Term Care?, NIH Nat’l Inst. on Aging (Oct. 12, 2023), https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/long-term-care/what-long-term-care. ↩︎
2. Long-Term Care, Medicare.gov, https://www.medicare.gov/coverage/long-term-care (last visited Mar. 30, 2026). ↩︎
3. What Is Long-Term Care?, supra note 1. ↩︎
4. How Much Care Will You Need?, LongTermCare.gov (Feb. 18, 2020), https://acl.gov/ltc/basic-needs/how-much-care-will-you-need. ↩︎
5. Id. ↩︎
6. Stephanie Stearns, How Long Does the Average Person Need Long-Term Care?, Nw. Mut. (Aug. 28, 2024), https://www.northwesternmutual.com/life-and-money/how-long-does-the-average-person-need-long-term-care. ↩︎
7. Calculate the Cost of Long-Term Care Near You, CareScout, https://www.carescout.com/cost-of-care (last visited Mar. 30, 2026). ↩︎
8. Long-Term Care Costs Increase in California, Exceeding National Costs, Nasdaq (Mar. 4, 2025), https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/long-term-care-costs-increase-california-exceeding-national-costs-2025-03-04. ↩︎
9. Genworth and CareScout Release Cost of Care Survey Results for 2024, BusinessWire (Mar. 4, 2025), https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250301584443/en/Genworth-and-CareScout-Release-Cost-of-Care-Survey-Results-for-2024. ↩︎
10. Lillian Kafka, Average Retirement Savings by Age: How Do You Compare?, Transamerica (Oct. 7, 2025), https://www.transamerica.com/knowledge-place/average-retirement-savings-age-how-do-you-compare. ↩︎

America is facing a caregiver crisis.

With baby boomers entering retirement in record numbers and most wanting to age in place in their homes, demand for long-term care at home is rapidly rising. Yet the supply of professional caregivers has not kept pace, leaving many families without reliable support and placing growing pressure on informal unpaid family caregivers.

Many of these caregivers are simultaneously working full time and raising children while managing the daily needs of aging parents or disabled loved ones. The caregiving burden disproportionately falls on women in their prime earning years and carries significant emotional, physical, financial, and health consequences. With potential cuts to programs such as Medicaid, the strain on family caregivers is quite likely to intensify.

Caregiving responsibilities can quietly push aside personal goals, including retirement planning, career advancement, and long-term financial security. Financial advisors are probably already working with caregiver clients, often without recognizing them as such.

When advisors recognize the signs and understand the trade-offs that caregivers are making, they create space not only for empathy but also for strategy, helping clients navigate caregiving demands without abandoning their own financial futures.

The Silent and Invisible Family Caregiver Crisis

Approximately one in four US adults, or 63 million Americans, serve as unpaid family caregivers for loved ones in the home—an increase of almost 50 percent since 2015.¹

They provide essential services worth hundreds of billions of dollars per year, in many cases with little or no training, institutional support, or financial assistance.

This caregiving crisis is described as silent or invisible because it takes place mostly outside the formal healthcare system and behind closed doors. However, the value of these unpaid services, estimated at roughly $1.1 trillion annually, exceeds all out-of-pocket spending on healthcare in the United States.²

While some funding is available to family caregivers, most of their work is not only unpaid, it also comes with out-of-pocket expenses on top of the tolls to their own health and emotional well-being.

Here are several figures that put the family caregiver crisis in perspective:

• The average amount of time spent in an informal caregiver role is 24 hours per week,³ but nearly one-quarter of caregivers provide more than 40 hours of care per week.⁴
• On average, family caregivers spend 26 percent of their income on activities related to caregiving.⁵
• Nearly half of caregivers report having out-of-pocket financial impacts due to caregiving responsibilities: 28 percent stopped saving; 23 percent took on more debt; 22 percent used up short-term savings; and 19 percent left bills unpaid or paid them late.⁶
• The typical caregiver is 51 years old and female, although male caregivers are on the rise, accounting for 40 percent.⁷ Caregivers’ average lost wages and benefits over a lifetime are $324,000 for women and $284,000 for men.⁸
• One in five caregivers reports poor health, one in four says that they struggle to care for their own health because of caregiving duties, and the same number report feeling socially isolated.⁹
• Most caregivers (nearly 70 percent) report difficulty balancing professional obligations and caregiving responsibilities; many are forced to make career sacrifices, including reducing paid work hours, passing up promotions, taking a leave of absence, quitting, or retiring early.¹⁰ Those who leave the workforce and come back after caregiving are often paid less with fewer benefits.
• Twenty-nine percent are “sandwich generation” caregivers, supporting their children and parents at the same time. Adult care recipients tend to be 75 years old or older, and most have multiple health conditions, including dementia.

Caring for the Caregivers: How Advisors Can Support Clients Under Strain

Caregiving often begins modestly, with occasional voluntary tasks that gradually increase in frequency, complexity, and emotional weight. Any one of your clients could be acting as a caregiver, and you may not know it. Only around half of informal caregivers, for example, report that their employers are aware of their caregiving responsibilities.¹¹

Caregiver burnout and financial strain can likewise progress incrementally.

When advisors recognize the signs of a caregiver under stress, physically or financially, they can help them find balance through planning, access to resources, and structured support.

Planning Priorities

• Automating bill payments and savings contributions. Automation helps maintain financial continuity when caregiving reduces available time and attention.
• Reviewing long-term care (LTC) insurance options. LTC coverage can help offset qualifying expenses and expand available care options.
• Ensuring adequate retirement savings. Directing resources toward caregiving needs can drain finances. A middle ground is needed between immediate caregiver spending and future savings.
• Reviewing beneficiary designations. Shifts in dependency can make outdated designations problematic by disadvantaging caregivers, disrupting benefits, and undermining planning goals.

Managing Hidden Costs

These are some of the hidden costs of caregiving:

• Reduced work hours or lost income,including early retirement or stalled careers
• Care-related expenses,such as transportation, medical supplies, home modifications, and supplemental services
• Developing realistic budgetsthat reflect caregiving demands
• Exploring public benefitssuch as Medicaid and Veterans Affairs programs that pay family caregivers¹²

Other resources that caregiver clients may find useful can be found through the Family Caregiver Alliance,¹³ the Caregiver Action Network,¹⁴ the Zen Caregiving Project,¹⁵ and the Administration for Community Living.¹⁶ Caregiving technology and apps may also help.¹⁷

The advisor’s role here is not to give detailed medical or legal advice but to create a space for honest conversations while maintaining professional objectivity and helping clients see that planning for themselves is part of caring for others. In this way, you can care for the caregivers so they can thrive in the role, whether it is expected or unexpected, short-term or long-term, or supporting a family member or a friend. You may find that clients deeply appreciate that someone is finally acknowledging the mental, physical, and financial toll of caregiving. That recognition can strengthen your credibility not just as an advisor but also as an advocate who connects people, plans, and resources.

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1. AARP, Caregiving in the US: Research Report 7(July 2025), https://www.aarp.org/content/dam/aarp/ppi/topics/ltss/family-caregiving/caregiving-in-us-2025.doi.10.26419-2fppi.00373.001.pdf. ↩︎
2. Katherine Gallagher Robbins & Jessica Mason, If Americans Were Paid for Their Caregiving, They Would Make More Than $1.1 Trillion, nationalpartnership, (June 26, 2025), https://nationalpartnership.org/if-americans-were-paid-for-their-caregiving-they-would-make-more-than-1-1-trillion. ↩︎
3. Shawn Britt, Home Health Care and the Caregiver Crisis in America, Nationwide, https://www.nationwide.com/financial-professionals/topics/health-care-cost-longevity/pages/caregiver-crisis-in-america (last visited Feb. 25, 2026). ↩︎
4. New Report Reveals Crisis Point for America’s 63 Million Family Caregivers, AARP (Aug. 1, 2025), https://states.aarp.org/maryland/caregiving-report. ↩︎
5. Laura Skufca & Gerard Rainville, Caregiving Can Be Costly—Even Financially, AARP (June 29, 2021), https://www.aarp.org/pri/topics/ltss/family-caregiving/family-caregivers-cost-survey. ↩︎
6. AARP, Caregiving in the US, supra note 14, at 43. ↩︎
7. Sarah Baniak, Invisible Crisis: America’s Caregivers and the $600 Billion Unpaid Cost of Their Labor, ABC News (Feb. 14, 2025), https://abcnews.go.com/US/invisible-crisis-americas-caregivers-600-billion-unpaid-cost/story?id=116129335. ↩︎
8. MetLife, The MetLife Study of Caregiving Costs to Working Caregivers: Double Jeopardy for Baby Boomers Caring for Their Parents 4 (June 2011), https://www.homecaregenerations.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/study.pdf. ↩︎
9. AARP, Caregiving in the US, supra note 14, at 55. ↩︎
10. New U.S. Workforce Report: Nearly 70% of Family Caregivers Report Difficulty Balancing Career and Caregiving Responsibilities, Spurring Long-Term Impacts to U.S. Economy, AARP (May 16, 2024), https://www.aarp.org/press/releases/2024-5-16-us-workforce-report-70-caregivers-difficulty-balancing-career-caregiving-responsibilities.html. ↩︎
11. Caregiver Statistics: Work and Caregiving, Fam. Caregiver All., https://www.caregiver.org/resource/caregiver-statistics-work-and-caregiving (last visited Feb. 25, 2026). ↩︎
12. Julie B. Kennedy, Five Ways Family Caregivers Can Get Paid, NCOA (Jan. 8, 2025), https://www.ncoa.org/article/five-ways-family-caregivers-can-get-paid. ↩︎
13. Family Caregiver Services by State, Fam. Caregiver All., http://caregiver.org/connecting-caregivers/services-by-state (last visited Feb. 26, 2026). ↩︎
14. The Family Caregiver Toolbox, Caregiver Action Network, https://www.caregiveraction.org/toolbox (last visited Feb. 26, 2026). ↩︎
15. Better Caregiving Through Mindfulness, Zen Caregiving Project, https://zencaregiving.org/for-caregivers (last visited Feb. 26, 2026). ↩︎
16. Caregiving and Direct Care Workforce, ACL (Feb. 4, 2026), https://acl.gov/programs/support-caregivers. ↩︎
17. Rachel Lustbader, The Best Caregiving Apps of 2024: 6 Apps to Help You Through Common Caregiving Challenges, Caring (Feb. 11, 2026), https://www.caring.com/resources/best-caregiving-apps. ↩︎

Certain topics can be difficult to broach with clients. Delivering bad news such as “You can’t afford to retire yet”; addressing sensitive life events such as death, divorce, or job loss; managing family conflicts; and challenging bad financial habits or unrealistic expectations rank high on that list.

Many of these tough talks involve revealing a client’s behavioral blind spots such as unconscious patterns, assumptions, or risks that may be obvious to an advisor but invisible to the client. But one of the most significant blind spots often remains unaddressed in planning discussions: the risk of disability.

Death is a topic that most clients can tolerate when it remains abstract, distant, and financially focused. Disability, however, can be harder to confront, even though its financial impact is often greater, more immediate, and more disruptive.

Disability is not limited to something a person is born with. It can affect anyone, at any age, at any income level, and under almost any circumstances. By thoughtfully raising this uncomfortable topic and helping clients intentionally anticipate and mitigate disability-related risks, advisors can deepen trust and demonstrate value around one of life’s most consequential what-ifs.

The Ever-Present Risk of Disability

For many people, death may feel like something that reliably arrives in old age, not as an imminent or unpredictable risk. That perception can change abruptly. The first loss of a close friend or family member often reshapes how people think about death and dying—and sometimes prompts them to put their own affairs in order.

The COVID-19 pandemic was one such moment. Heightened awareness of illness and mortality combined with the need to manage healthcare directives triggered a surge in estate planning as millions took steps to protect their loved ones; for many, though, that sense of urgency has now receded. 

Most Americans dramatically underestimate both the very real risk and the significant financial consequences of disability.

• The Social Security Administration estimates that about 1 in 4 20-year-oldswill experience a disability lasting 90 days or more before reaching age 67.¹
• About 13 percent of Americans are classified as disabled,² yet two-thirds of workers believe their own risk of long-term disability is just 1 or 2 percent.³
• According to the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), more than half of Americans turning 65 will develop a disability serious enough to require long-term services and supports.⁴
• Illness, not accidents, is the leading cause of disability, and mental health conditions account for roughly 1 in 10 long-term disability cases.⁵
• Households with a disabled working-age adult need 28 percent more income on average, or an extra $17,000–$18,000 annually, to maintain the same standard of living due to higher expenses for healthcare, equipment, personal care, housing, and lost earnings.⁶

Although many disabilities are temporary, a significant share are not. About 1 in 5 adults (22 percent) will have a disability for more than five years.⁷

The longer somebody is disabled, the more it impacts their finances. Estimates suggest that a 35-year-old who earns $75,000 annually and suffers a permanent disability could lose up to $2.25 million in potential earnings by age 65,⁸ and a disability beginning at age 45 could result in more than $1 million in lost lifetime income.⁹

Making Planning Decisions Before Disability Strikes

Because incapacity can strike without warning, clients need to have incapacity planning in place beforeit becomes necessary, not after.

Legal capacity is required to create most estate planning materials, and documents executed after capacity has been lost may be challenged or invalidated.

Delaying planning can also have severe financial consequences because it may necessitate additional costly legal procedures at a time when care expenses may be rapidly mounting as income and savings decline. For many households, even a short disruption can be destabilizing.

• Roughly three-quarters of Americans live from paycheck to paycheck, leaving little margin to absorb the financial shock of disability, especially a prolonged one.¹⁰
• Nearly 4 in 10 cannot cover an unexpected $500 expense, let alone sustained increases in healthcare, housing, or caregiving costs.¹¹
• Approximately 50 million adults lack disability insurance beyond Social Security,¹² and the average monthly Social Security benefit for a disabled worker is under $2,000 per month.¹³
• Since most Americans have no estate plan, they lack powers of attorney and other critical disability and incapacity documents, forcing loved ones to pursue costly legal proceedings to get authority to access finances or make care decisions. 

Advisors can frame the disability discussion around these financial pressure points and help clients evaluate proactive planning steps such as

• powers of attorney (POAs)to avoid court involvement during incapacity;
• adequate funding of trusts,so they function not only at death but also during periods of disability;
• accessible emergency funds sized for durationin addition to one-time surprises; and
• income replacement and disability insurance to address prolonged earnings disruption.

Other considerations include ensuring authority during short-term disability and coordinating employer benefits with public programs to prevent gaps or unintended consequences such as the loss of means-tested government disability benefits like Supplemental Security Income (SSI).

Disability planning, like all effective planning, should match the client’s life conditions. Wealth level, family structure, employment status, and existing benefits all shape what proactive disability planning looks like in practice. A young professional focused on income protection, a midcareer parent juggling competing responsibilities, and a retiree managing longevity risk will each face different vulnerabilities and have different planning priorities.

Individually tailoring disability conversations reinforces that this type of planning is not alarmist, worst-case thinking. It is realistic personal preparation for a statistically supported possibility.

Done right, disability planning becomes another way to integrate protection, continuity, and trust into every client relationship to strengthen long-term engagement and retention.

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1. Soc. Sec. Admin., Disability Benefits, Pub. No. 05-10029, at 5 (Feb. 2025), https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10029.pdf. ↩︎
2. Rebecca Leppert & Katherine Schaeffer, 8 Facts About Americans with Disabilities, Pew Rsch. Ctr. (July 24, 2023), https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/07/24/8-facts-about-americans-with-disabilities. ↩︎
3. Allan Checkoway, Chance of Becoming Disabled, in A Lawyer’s Guide to Filing Long-Term Disability Claims and Appeals 1, 2 (2020), https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba-cms-dotorg/products/inv/book/346779304/Sample.pdf. ↩︎
4. HHS Off. of the Assistant Sec’y for Plan. and Evaluation, Research Brief: Long-Term Services and Supports for Older Americans: Risks and Financing, 2022, at 1 (Aug. 2022), https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/08b8b7825f7bc12d2c79261fd7641c88/ltss-risks-financing-2022.pdf [hereinafter ASPE Research Brief]. ↩︎
5. Uncomfortable Truths About Disability That May Surprise You, MassMutual 175 (Sept. 15, 2023), https://blog.massmutual.com/insurance/disability-surprising-facts. ↩︎
6. The Extra Costs of Living with a Disability in the U.S. — Resetting the Policy Table, ndi, https://www.nationaldisabilityinstitute.org/reports/extra-costs-living-with-disability (last visited Feb. 25, 2026). ↩︎
7. ASPE Research Brief, supra note 4, at 1. ↩︎
8. Uncomfortable Truths About Disability That May Surprise You, supra note 5. ↩︎
9. Id. ↩︎
10. Number of Americans Living Paycheck to Paycheck Has Increased, PR Newswire (Sept. 14, 2022), https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/number-of-americans-living-paycheck-to-paycheck-has-increased-301624801.html. ↩︎
11. Fed. Rsrv. Bd., Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2023, at 37 (May 2024), https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2023-report-economic-well-being-us-households-202405.pdf. ↩︎
12. Illness or Injury—and the Accompanying Financial Challenges—Can Happen to Anyone, CDIA, https://thecdia.org/the-risk-is-very-real (last visited Feb. 25, 2026). ↩︎
13. Social Security Disability Benefits Calculator, Disability Advice, https://disabilityadvice.org/ssdi-calculator (last visited Feb. 25, 2026). ↩︎

Many famous figures have argued that how a society treats its most vulnerable members is a measure of its humanity and moral character. As Mahatma Gandhi famously observed, a society is ultimately judged not by its wealth or power but by how it uplifts those who need help the most.

The same principle may apply at the individual and family level: It is not how we treat the powerful and successful in our lives but how we treat those who struggle to secure life’s basics—healthcare, housing, education, and employment—that reveals our true priorities and character.

Advisors work across the full gamut of clients, from high-net-worth individuals managing generational wealth to middle-class households optimizing modest means and lower-income families working to improve their financial footing. While some may be born with the proverbial silver spoon, others may have limited means, and many may be navigating a significant disability.

Different backgrounds and family dynamics call for different planning strategies, especially when traditional approaches could compromise key government benefits and special needs planning becomes necessary.

Advising clients with disabled loved ones demands not only sensitivity but also proactive, coordinated planning that anticipates risk, protects benefits, and balances long-term financial decisions with long-term care planning. While financial advisors may be limited in the disability-specific advice they can provide, they add meaningful value by coordinating communication across disciplines.

Step One: Recognizing When Special Needs Planning Is Necessary

The better advisors get to know their clients, the better they can serve them. We cannot advise on what we do not know. The necessity for special needs planning may emerge indirectly through offhand comments, financial work-arounds, or long-standing family arrangements that signal deeper caregiving or benefit-dependency issues, especially if families are hesitant to openly disclose concerns. To do our jobs effectively, we must read between the lines and pay attention to specific cues or comments that may indicate an often unrecognized need for special needs planning. These cues might look like the following:

• Ongoing financial support for an adult family member that appears permanent rather than transitional
• References to Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Medicaid, or income limits, even a casual mention in passing
• One family member acting as an informal caregiver without clear authority or documentation
• Uncertainty or hesitation around inheritances, gifts, or beneficiary designations
• Adult children who have never lived independently or who rely on family-provided housing or oversight
• Care-oriented language lacking labels, such as “We handle things for him” or “She needs extra help”

When such signals arise, it may be appropriate to become more direct—for example, confirming that the client has a disabled family member—and move on to the next step: initiating a special needs planning conversation.

Step Two: Starting the Conversation

If clients are forthright about a disabled loved one, or once it becomes clear that clients have a loved one with a significant disability, financial advisors can take meaningful steps to move from recognition to action.

If clients are hesitant, advisors may find it productive to frame the discussion around risk, unintended consequences, and continuity (instead of disability) by asking probing, forward-looking questions, such as how current support would function if something disrupted it.

Ideally, potential issues should be flagged early, before assets are transferred or beneficiaries are named in a client’s estate plan. The objective is not to offer special needs planning advice or legal advice but to serve as the central coordinator—the “hub” connecting the family with the estate planning attorney, life care planner, social worker, and other professionals involved.

Within this context, financial advisors can introduce and provide a high-level overview of the following planning topics:

• Special needs planning structures. Make sure the client is aware of special needs planning tools such as special, or supplemental, needs trusts (SNTs) and Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) accounts. You can provide a rough overview with a clear handoff to legal counsel for further discussion and, ultimately, design and implementation.
• The role of a professional care manager. A care manager for individuals with disabilities or special needs is a professional (typically a nurse or social worker) who coordinates, advocates for, and manages all aspects of a person’s care. Identify situations where a care manager may be appropriate and how costs can be planned for over time.
• Funding considerations. Individuals with special needs may need extra support from family members in a way that will not reduce or eliminate their means-tested government benefits because a direct inheritance or entitlement to assets may jeopardize eligibility for benefits.

Again, the intent is not to advise on any one particular strategy but to broach funding considerations that touch on broad topics such as maximizing the effectiveness of beneficiary designations, life insurance, lifetime gifts, and strategic gifting to SNTs and ABLE accounts.

As the central hub in the special needs planning wheel, you are ideally situated to identify areas of concern and connect families with qualified professionals to do the heavy lifting. Even without providing technical solutions, that coordination alone delivers real value. It demonstrates foresight, care, and an understanding that families of individuals with special needs may require nonstandard planning approaches.

Step Three: Closing the Circle

How advisors document and communicate these issues is just as important as initially raising them.

Conversations around special needs planning may involve sensitive family dynamics, evolving care responsibilities, and decisions that may not be implemented—or take effect—right away. Careful documentation of what was discussed, in addition to clear notes on assumptions, limitations, and next steps, helps protect the client, the family, and the advisor while creating continuity as situations change.

Transparency and regular review are central to creating this circle of trust. Families’ care needs, benefit eligibility, and support structures rarely remain static, and plans that work today may introduce risk tomorrow if they are not revisited and revised or if circumstances shift, whether at the individual or policy level.

Periodic check-ins and coordinated plan reviews that keep decisions aligned with a family’s long-term prospects reinforce your role as not just an advisor but a trusted partner who has their priorities straight.

If you would like to discuss special needs-related issues in your client relationships or how to coordinate effectively with planning professionals, we are happy to continue the conversation.

Well, that doesn’t seem right. 

It usually starts with something small. A strange email from a bank your client does not recognize. A new credit card account they do not remember opening. A password reset link they never requested. A notice from the IRS that someone has already filed a tax return in their name. 

At first there is confusion. No, there’s no way that’s right. 

Then anxiety sets in. Am I being scammed? 

After that, there may be hours or days spent on the phone with banks, credit bureaus, and government agencies to reach an unsettling conclusion: Someone has my information and is pretending to be me. 

Next comes anger, frustration, and a sense of violation. How could this happen?

Acceptance eventually sets in, along with a determination to never let scammers get the upper hand again. But sometimes it is too late. The damage has been done—to finances, reputation, peace of mind, and, sometimes, legacy. 

Preventing cybercrimes such as identity theft starts with awareness, including the recognition that cybersecurity is not just an IT problem anymore. It is a wealth preservation issue that can affect someone’s legacy even after they are gone. And for advisors, that awareness plays a central role in strengthening clients’ digital defenses long before their estates ever reach administration. 

Scammers routinely target estates, executors, and grieving families, often by mining obituaries and public probate records to launch phishing, impersonation, and identity-theft schemes.

Growing Cyberthreats Can Affect Estate Planning

Consider having “the talk” with clients about cryptocurrencies and their digital estate plan if they have one. However, that talk is incomplete if it fails to cover the growing risks that their digital assets—and legacy—face from cybercriminals.

• Seventy-three percent of US adults have experienced some form of online scam or cyberattack. Most report weekly scam calls, text, and emails.¹ 
• Americans reported 2.6 million fraud cases and 1.1 million identity-theft incidents to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2024. Losses exceeded $12.5 billion, a 25 percent increase over the prior year.²
• Identity theft is now one of the most common types of consumer fraud, with nearly 750,000 cases in the first half of 2025 alone.³ 
• Seventy-six percent of consumers say they feel more anxious about cybersecurity today than they did two years ago, driven by impersonation enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) and increasingly sophisticated scams.⁴

Cybercriminals now use AI-generated voice clones to impersonate loved ones, breached financial and medical data to answer security questions, and automated scraping of public records to target people with unnerving precision. Nearly everyone will be targeted at some point if they have not already been. Even if your clients avoid direct harm during their lifetime, their estate and heirs may be more vulnerable after their death.

Why Estates Can Be Vulnerable to Cybercriminals

Older adults are particularly vulnerable to online scams and fraud due to their lower digital literacy and higher accumulated wealth. The FBI reports that in 2024, Americans over the age of 60 were the most frequently targeted group and lost the most money.⁵

Fraud schemes targeting the estates of people who have passed away are another area of growing cybercrime concern.⁶ As with older adults, estates, particularly those of seniors, are often perceived as holding substantial assets. The individuals and property involved with estate administration can also create unique vulnerabilities that attract cybercriminals. 

• The decedent’s loved ones are often overwhelmed and distracted, making them more susceptible to realistic-sounding scams. Cybercriminals use times of chaos, confusion, and heightened emotion to their advantage, preying on feelings such as fear, urgency, and trust during times when people might let their guard down. 
• Executors may be unfamiliar with digital security, making phishing attempts more successful.
• Multiple parties (attorneys, advisors, banks, beneficiaries) are exchanging sensitive documents during estate administration, sometimes through unsecured or informal methods.
• The decedent’s dormant accounts are often easy entry points for identity theft because they often go unmonitored, rely on outdated passwords, and may be tied to personal information that criminals can exploit before anyone realizes there is a problem.
• Scammers routinely impersonate banks, government agencies, attorneys, or even the executor.
• Probate is public, giving criminals a ready-made list of heirs, contact information, and sometimes asset details.

Social engineering attacks—scams that use deception rather than technical hacking—that rely on sophisticated cybertools such as AI to exploit basic human psychology and manipulate people are on the rise.⁷ And just as cybercriminals capitalize on natural disasters⁸ and tech outages,⁹ the estate administration process is a scenario that could provide the perfect opening for fraud and deception. 

A Digital Defense Plan for Advisors and Their Clients

Clients count on advisors to help safeguard their wealth. In today’s digital world, that includes protecting against cyberrisks that can compromise traditional and digital assets. Advisors can meaningfully reduce exposure by addressing the most common vulnerabilities before and during estate administration.

Issue: Email is the weakest link. Most cyberattacks begin with email.

• Advisor action: Encourage strong passwords, multifactor authentication (MFA), and encrypted document-sharing platforms. Advise against sending sensitive materials unprotected and urge your clients to encourage their executors to follow the same security practices when administering the estate.

Issue: Executors cannot secure what they cannot see. Unknown or dormant accounts remain open and unmonitored, making them prime targets for takeover and identity theft.

• Advisor action: Help clients build a detailed inventory of important digital accounts and storage locations. Instead of collecting credentials yourself, have your clients ensure that their fiduciaries know what accounts must be closed, monitored, or secured. 

Issue: Sensitive legal and tax documents are insecurely stored or shared. Wills, statements, and tax documents often sit unprotected in inboxes or cloud folders.

• Advisor action: Encourage secure online storage using encrypted folders or password-protected vaults, and ensure that fiduciaries know where to find documents and how to access them.

Issue: Executors may not be prepared for digital threats. Phishing attempts surge during estate administration, and many executors are unfamiliar with digital-security practices.

• Advisor action: Suggest naming a tech-literate executor (or coexecutor) who is comfortable managing digital accounts and security protocols. Have clients provide a brief “executor security checklist” that outlines verification steps (such as confirming account ownership and access authority) and highlights common red flags such as urgent payment requests, unexpected account changes, or requests for credentials.

Issue: Probate exposes personal information. Public probate court filings often disclose the names and contact information of executors and beneficiaries and may even include a list of assets with their values—information that scammers can easily weaponize.

• Advisor action: Encourage your clients to meet with their estate planning attorney to discuss whether trust-based planning or other probate-avoidance tools can reduce public exposure and limit targeted fraud.

Issue: Heirs and beneficiaries are prime targets for impersonation scams. Criminals impersonate banks, attorneys, courts, or even the executor to solicit money or sensitive data. For example, a scammer may send an email posing as the estate’s bank or attorney, claiming an urgent problem with an account and requesting immediate payment or login credentials from a beneficiary or executor.

• Advisor action: Encourage clients and prospects to educate executors and beneficiaries about common scams¹⁰ and establish a simple verification process for unexpected requests.

Issue: Identity theft of the deceased is common. Criminals use a decedent’s information to open credit accounts, redirect mail, or file fraudulent tax returns.

• Advisor action: Provide clients with a postdeath digital checklist: notify credit bureaus, freeze credit files, and close unused accounts promptly.

Issue: Families may not know what “normal” looks like. Executors and heirs sometimes cannot distinguish legitimate communications from sophisticated scams.

• Advisor action: Become engaged early in the process. Encourage fiduciaries and heirs to verify all unexpected communications with you or the estate’s attorney before acting.

The Best Defense Is a Good Office Visit

“The best defense is a good offense” is a truism in sports, the military, and the business world. Advisors and clients cannot confront online fraudsters in their digital hideouts, but they can take a proactive approach to cybersecurity rooted in awareness, preparation, and avoiding high-risk situations. 

Schedule a time to talk with your clients about their digital defense plan and how you—and we—can be part of the solution.

1. Jeffrey Gottfried, Eugenie Park, & Monica Anderson, Online Scams and Attacks in America Today, Pew Rsch. Ctr. (July 31, 2025), https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/07/31/online-scams-and-attacks-in-america-today. ↩︎
2. New FTC Data Show a Big Jump in Reported Losses to Fraud to $12.5 Billion in 2024, Fed. Trade Comm’n (Mar. 10, 2025), https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/03/new-ftc-data-show-big-jump-reported-losses-fraud-125-billion-2024. ↩︎
3. Jack Caporal, Identity Theft and Credit Card Fraud Statistics for 2025, MotleyFoolMoney (Aug. 15, 2025), https://www.fool.com/money/research/identity-theft-credit-card-fraud-statistics. ↩︎
4. Vicky Hyman, When It Comes to Fraud, a Sense of Insecurity and Even Inevitability, Global Survey Shows, Mastercard Cybersecurity (Oct. 6, 2025), https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/news-and-trends/stories/2025/consumer-cybersecurity-survey.html.
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5. Press Release, FBI, FBI Releases Annual Internet Crime Report (Apr. 23, 2025), https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-annual-internet-crime-report. ↩︎
6. Henry Rinder, Fraud Targeting the Elderly and Estates: A Growing Concern, NJCPA (Sept. 23, 2024), https://www.njcpa.org/stayinformed/news/blog/post/njcpa-focus/2024/09/23/fraud-targeting-the-elderly-and-estates–a-growing-concern. ↩︎
7. Michelle Maratto & Sana Hashmat, Unmasking Social Engineering: Protecting Your Wealth from Deceptive Cyber Tactics, J.P. Morgan Wealth Mgmt. (Oct. 1, 2025), https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/cybersecurity/phishing/unmasking-social-engineering-protecting-your-wealth-from-deceptive-cyber-tactics. ↩︎
8. Niamh Ancell, Cybercriminals Capitalize on LA Wildfire Chaos via Fake GoFundMe’s and Crypto Coins, Cybernews (Jan. 17, 2025), https://cybernews.com/cybercrime/cybercriminals-exploit-la-wildfires. ↩︎
9. Brian Fung & Sean Lyngaas, Hackers Are Already Taking Advantage of the CrowdStrike Outage Chaos, CNN Bus. (July 22, 2024), https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/22/tech/hackers-crowdstrike-outage-scams. ↩︎
10. How to Avoid Imposter Scams, Fed. Trade Comm’n Consumer Advice, https://consumer.ftc.gov/features/how-avoid-imposter-scams (last visited Dec. 22, 2025). ↩︎