The Elder Law Coach

Epi 54: Breaking Silos: How Attorneys and Financial Advisors Can Transform Client Experience

• Todd Whatley

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Todd Whatley reveals the transformative power of attorneys and financial advisors working side-by-side to provide comprehensive elder law services that truly meet clients' needs. Drawing from 25 years of experience and recent success implementing this collaborative approach, Todd explains how breaking down professional silos creates superior outcomes and increases profitability.

• The current system forces clients to shuttle between separate attorneys and financial advisors who rarely communicate
• Important planning details get lost and recommendations conflict when professionals work in isolation
• Mutual distrust between attorneys and advisors often prevents collaboration that would benefit everyone
• Financial advisors face pressure to offer estate planning through "ghost law firms" that provide inferior documents
• Implementing a collaborative approach where financial advisors join attorney meetings creates comprehensive solutions
• Having both professionals present ensures clients receive complete advice on legal, tax, and long-term care issues
• Real case example: advisor identified undervalued business assets, resulting in improved tax planning strategies
• Attorneys practicing without financial advisor partnerships miss opportunities and leave money on the table
• When professionals collaborate, clients leave with integrated legal and financial plans aligned with their needs

If you're interested in transforming your practice with these strategies, join us at the Transformation Summit next February where we'll spend four hours expanding on this approach. Email Trisha at Trisha@theelderlawcoach.com for information.


Check out our new website www.TheElderLawCoach.com.

Speaker 1:

You're tuning into the Elder Law Coach podcast, the definitive resource for attorneys delving into the world of elder law, with your host, todd Whatley, a certified elder law attorney, past president of the National Elder Law Foundation and renowned coach with a quarter century of specialized experience. Whether you're an established attorney looking to refine your expertise or an emerging lawyer seeking a successful foray into elder law, this is your masterclass. Now let's get started with the luminary in the field. Here's Todd Whatley.

Speaker 2:

That's right. This is the Elder Law Coach Podcast. My name is Todd Whatley and I know I say this every time, but I am truly, very thankful that you do join me and listen, and we are gaining some steam. Every time I post something, there are a substantial number of you who do listen and I appreciate that very much. And if you're just now stumbling onto this, please like and add to your favorites and you will be notified every time that I do this. And also don't think I say enough that this is the place where we help attorneys build successful elder law and estate planning practices and teach you how to do it with purpose, confidence and profitability.

Speaker 2:

So I am a certified law attorney and I've been doing this for 25 years now, and for most of that time I have not had successful relationships with financial advisors, and so today I think I have figured it out and have been very successful over the last few years, worked out the kinks, and today the topic is going to be working side by side with financial advisors successfully and showing how you can truly meet your client's best interest and meet all of their needs in one meeting. Client's best interest and meet all of their needs in one meeting and just from looking back over 25 years, I have seen where there have been so many clients who have not had their needs met. I think I met with them. I think that I've done everything legally that I can. I've done their documents, I've done powers of attorney. I was very proud of what I did, but there was just this lingering issue of man. They are in some bad investments and no one's talking to them about taxes and insurance issues and I've just never been able to have a good relationship. And sometimes I would even call their advisor and say, hey, I just did documents for them in a very open tone, very conciliatory manner, and say, hey, I just noticed. And when you bring this up, they're like, oh, I've got this covered, don't worry about it, this is my lane, you stay in your lane, we've got this covered. I'm like, okay, but you really don't. And so I think working with financial advisors is huge and I think it can greatly increase your business and if you can find the right financial advisor out there, you can greatly increase their business and it's doing things that help each other. But the best thing is you're meeting the client's needs. You are having them leave your office with a solid financial and legal plan that mesh together, work together and I have been so happy over the last two years seeing how our clients have really gotten great solutions and have met their needs. They leave happier, we leave happier. It's just better for everyone.

Speaker 2:

Okay, now what's the problem? The system is broken. Okay, we have one client having to go to two different offices and try to get two professionals to ideally meet together but at least talk and many times they don't talk and trying to go between offices getting a little bit of information from the attorney and taking that information to the advisor and that advisor saying, well, yeah, but this, and taking that information back to the attorney, and it's just back and forth and back and forth and it's just not a great system. You know, we see it like there's two silos and they never communicate, they don't share anything and it is not meeting the client's best interests, because important details get lost, lost, recommendations conflict, I may say something, and the financial advisors, well, they don't understand this and so they recommend this, and then they bring that back to me and I'm like, well, they missed this point and I would recommend this, and it's just back and forth and back and forth again. It's just frustrating and so things don't get done. The client sometimes just gives up and says you know, I just I don't know how to do this. Once I started combining these two together, it just the clients were super happy, we were super happy, it just seems to work, okay. And uh, you know, it just seems like when the attorney and the financial advisor sit at the same table, in the same room with the client, everything changes. Okay, everything seems to change because you're getting so much done in that one hour meeting.

Speaker 2:

All right, let's be honest, a lot of attorneys and financial advisors we just don't trust each other. Okay, attorneys worry that the advisor is going to give legal advice and advisors, I will tell you, are very worried that the attorney is going to steal the client. Okay, as you probably know, I got my license because I was seeing people were not in good investments and so I got my series 65 to help clients do this. Well, I get all of the feedback, all of the advertisements and I'll get to this in just a second. But I will tell you, financial advisors are doing their best to keep their clients from going to attorneys, and if you're worried about losing a financial advisor relationship over doing this. I can promise you they are being persuaded to cut off that relationship. They want their clients to stay in their office and get their legal documents done in their office and not go to the attorney. And the problem is clients don't care about turf wars. They don't care that the attorney's trying to protect their business and the financial advisor's trying to protect their business. They just want their issues solved. They care about results and they want results for their situation and they want to know that everyone is on their team pulling in the same direction.

Speaker 2:

Okay, now there are these things that I call ghost law firms. Financial advisors are being pressured right now to offer estate planning to their clients. Okay, and many financial advisors are being bombarded with low cost distant law firms that will gather the information and it's typically I mean it's not much better than Rocket Lawyer or any online legal document service. It is basically the financial advisor gives their client this information and the financial advisor probably pays a little bit for this to get done and they can go in there. The client puts in their information and the system creates a document. We all know how that is not in the client's best interest. They will pick things. You know, this is their first and probably last time to do this, and this will be our hundredth or 10,000th time to do this. We know things that the client doesn't know. We give better documents, but they are being pressured by their financial people to sit down with these ghost law firms.

Speaker 2:

And I actually attended a webinar one time a live webinar with this financial advisor who was pushing this, and so in this presentation he was like the clients get their documents in your office. There is no need for them to go see an attorney. They get this done. And so in the Q&A section I was like so are you not practicing law without a license? And he was like oh well, no, no, no, there's a law firm out there. They meet with an attorney. Well, they don't meet with an attorney. They fill out the paperwork and I'm sure some attorney sort of oversees it, but the issue is they're getting legal documents done and they're never meeting with the attorney. But the advisor's being very careful to say oh no, no, no, I'm not the attorney. There is an attorney out there doing these documents, but the client never meets with the attorney, never knows that their answers are correct or that they're going to do exactly what they want to do. So financial advisors are afraid that if they don't offer estate planning, the client will go somewhere else and they will lose them entirely. So if you don't have good relationships with financial advisors, there's probably a really good reason for that, and it is kind of sad that financial advisors settle for inferior plans just so they can keep the client. We all know we can give the client a much better option, and an attorney working with the advisor can do so much together that cannot be done separately. All right, so here's how this works. In my office we have an intake coordinator who meets with the people first. That's a free consult. They come in, they meet with this non-attorney initial person who talks to them, gets their information, lets them share why they may need our law firm, and then he always gets into the financial stuff.

Speaker 2:

Hey, tell me about finances. Has your financial? Do you have a financial advisor? And if they do, it's like okay, what are your plans for taxes? Well, we haven't talked about taxes. You know the government wants as much money as they can. We're broke, they need money. Taxes are not going down anytime soon. But your financial advisor has not talked about taxes. You're going into retirement or you have two or three millions in IRAs. What's your plan for getting that out with the lowest taxes? We haven't talked about that, huh, okay. What about long-term care? What's your plan for long-term care? Oh well, we've not talked about that either. And how long have you been with this advisor? Well, 10, 15 years, okay, and you've never talked about long-term care.

Speaker 2:

So he says, well, we have a financial advisor in our office who can sit down in the meeting with Todd or with Lauren in our office and would you like for them to be there and kind of look at this stuff? And I think it's well, over 90% say, yeah, that would be great. And our intake coordinator says our guy is really up to date on taxes and really up to date on long-term care because he and Todd work very closely, particularly for Medicaid and things like that. And Ian has taught Todd quite a few things about finances and Todd has taught Ian a lot about long-term care and estate planning documents and how that fits in with taxes. And Ian's increased knowledge of taxes really plays a part. And people are so happy to do that. They're like, yeah, let's have Ian sit there because I want to get a complete plan. And so if you want to do this, like in my office, you need a close relationship with a financial advisor. Okay, and I don't know if you have someone like that. If you do, fantastic, call them, have lunch, talk about this and say, look, we have got to start working together for clients and particularly taxes, long-term care, and just coming together for these plans is incredibly important, but a unified team is just absolutely necessary to meet these clients' needs and to do truly what is in their best interest. Okay, the client gets clarity, the attorney will now get real financial data and with full financial data, we can now do better documents and have better outcomes, and the advisor can also see what the attorney is doing, what the concerns are of the client, and address the taxes, the long-term care, those types of issues for a complete plan.

Speaker 2:

And it's interesting, when Ian and I are in meetings, I'll be going down the road and he normally lets me lead the meeting. We'll get there and I'll get into finances and taxes and I'll say something and he'll say Todd, I disagree. I'm like, okay, I'm not offended by that, because I know Ian has my back and knows that. I know what I'm talking about and I'm like, ok, I'm not offended by that, ok, because I know Ian has my back and knows that I'm, I know what I'm talking about and I'm not stupid. But he's like, hey, what about this? I'm like that's a good point and, for example and I just did a podcast on this, I think our last podcast was on this issue where I did not think the client had a taxable estate, but based on his business and some future things. And Ian does have another designation that allows him or helps him understand businesses and exit planning and things like that.

Speaker 2:

And if the economy turns around which it should this guy is going to have a massive taxable estate and I think his perception of the business now is incorrect. I think if we looked at the business and Ian asked him a few more questions and he said you think your business is worth two to three million, it's probably worth five or six, the guy was like, really, he's like, yeah, honestly, with Berlora, and Ian goes off on his thing, and so with that information, we now have a taxable estate. Now we start looking into charitable remainder trust, possibly an asset protection trust, living trust and I would have missed a lot of things. Ian caught that and this guy was like oh, I absolutely want to get this out of my estate, let's freeze it, let's do these things to save me probably two, three, four million dollars in taxes. And so I went from doing a revocable living trust to doing two or three more trusts to help this guy do exactly what he wanted. Okay, I would have totally missed that. So that's just an example of how this works, all right.

Speaker 2:

So if you are practicing interlaw or estate planning without a financial advisor by your side, I am telling you you are leaving money on the table. Your financial advisors are not doing what they can and your client is not getting the services that they need. You are not looking out for your client's best interests. If you don't have this team approach, okay, this does not have to be complicated. If you have a financial advisor that you know well and work well with, great, call them, have lunch, get started on this. If you don't call us, we'll be glad to talk to you. We'll help you find someone. We can answer some of your questions immediately. We can do this. We can co-host seminars with you to do this, but at least start the conversation.

Speaker 2:

So, basically, if your client's financial advisor has not brought up taxes and you see a tax problem. That's a problem. You should call us. If your client's financial advisor has not brought up long-term care and they're 60 or above, that's a huge problem. Okay, they need a different financial advisor. If you don't have your guy, give us a call. We can definitely get you through this to get them the products, the information, that they need.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so I've built this system. After 25 plus years, I finally got this figured out and it is working amazingly well in our office. Okay, now we will go into this. I think I have four hours scheduled for this in the transformation summit that is next February. Heard about that. If you were interested in absolutely completely transforming your practice from where it is now either, knowing nothing about elder law, and you want to get into it, I'm going to give you everything that you need in one weekend. I will follow up with you for six months after that to get you up and going, seeing clients advertising, getting your business transformed into an elder law practice and, like I just said, we spend, I think, four hours of time with Ian there talking about what I just talked about how to work with the financial advisor to bring in clients and to do what the clients need.

Speaker 2:

Okay, if you have questions about that, please go to our website. Need. Okay, if you have questions about that, please go to our website. The elder law coachcom. We have information on their contact person for the elder law coach is Tricia T R I S H A and you can reach her at Tricia at the elder law coachcom. Email her and say hey, I listened to the podcast. I want to know about transformation weekend Weekend or Transformation Summit, or you just want to do regular coaching? We can definitely talk about that to get you up and going and doing what is absolutely the best job in the world. All right, thank you for listening. I would love to hear from you. Let us help you do this and let us help you do it well. Okay, we will see you next time.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for joining this episode of the Elder Law Coach podcast. For those eager to take their elder law practice to new heights and are interested in Todd's acclaimed coaching program, visit wwwtheelderlawcoachcom. With Todd Whatley by your side, the journey to becoming an elder law authority has never been more achievable. Until next time, keep learning, keep growing and stay passionate about elder law.