Many people have misconceptions around estate planning. We want to clear up the myth that because advisors cannot give legal advice they should not act in a supporting role in their clients estate planning.
Advisors should always steer clear of Unauthorized Practice of Law.
In doing so they must not:
Legal advice involves taking the law and applying it to a particular situation.
As a quick example advisors should always avoid wording that would start with:
Advisors can provide quality general legal information without practicing law.
There are thousands of resources online that provide good general legal information for people to consider. Referencing that information for a client should use wording like:
The reality is most mass affluent families only need good legal information to make quality decisions for their basic estate planning needs.
It’s also incredibly important that advisors proactively do three things:
Encore assists advisors here by disqualifying many situations from our software. We also provide advisors with considerations for disclosing and documenting their clients understanding and agreement. Encore is not a fit for all clients. Engaging an Estate Planning attorney will be the best option for some clients.
We recommend even when working with an estate planning attorney that advisors stay deeply involved in assisting in the information gathering process.
This delivers the best client experience and ensures their clients estate planning procrastination comes to an end!