Journal of Financial Planning: April 2026
Anne Rhodes is chief legal officer at wealth.com, the most comprehensive digital estate planning platform.
There is no topic that I love more than how a financial adviser and a lawyer can establish a good working relationship in service of the client. After all, every estate planner’s best friend is a financial adviser who refers business to the estate planner.
For a productive and symbiotic relationship with an estate planner, it is particularly important that you, as a financial adviser, understand the ethical issues and professional standards that could be at play for the attorney and how they differ from yours. At times, it may seem that the lawyer may be bringing up issues that seem tenuous or putting guardrails in your ability to communicate with the client or participate in structuring questions. What are best practices so that you work together to accomplish the client’s objectives and maintain a product dynamic on the advisory team?
This article explores the legal issues that can arise through two case studies.
Case Study 1: A Client, a Financial Adviser, and an Attorney
In Case Study 1, you are the financial adviser for an individual, the “patriarch,” and are participating in the patriarch’s estate planning discussions with his attorney.
Case Study 2: An Irrevocable Trust, a Financial Adviser, an Attorney, and Many Others
In Case Study 2, you are the financial adviser and working with financial accounts held by a South Dakota trustee for an irrevocable trust established for tax planning purposes. The trustor (i.e., the “patriarch”) is still alive, and you also have a relationship with the beneficiaries of the trust (the children). The attorney who drafted the trust and the trustee are actively involved in the affairs of the trust.
Who Is the Client?
In both of these case studies, who is the client is the gating issue. For an attorney, who the client is determines the duties and responsibilities that the attorney owes to the party in question, and the outer limits of the attorney’s ability to interact, share communications, and act on behalf of third parties, including you, as the financial adviser. Importantly, who is the client also determines what legal protections are afforded to the attorney–client relationship from third parties or to an attorney’s materials prepared in anticipation of an audit or litigation.1
For a financial adviser, who is the client determines whose interests come first, who directs the transactions over a financial account or asset, and who is entitled to the duty of confidentiality.
Differences in Ethical Obligations Owed to a Client
Case Study 1
In Case Study 1, the question of who the client is should be relatively straightforward for both the financial adviser and the attorney. You are both providing professional services to the patriarch. However, note that the scope and form of your engagement with the patriarch may differ. For the financial adviser, the patriarch may have signed a contract upon account opening or terms of service upon creating a login on your firm’s platform. Rarely do these terms address your participation in any estate planning discussion.
For the attorney, the client and the purpose of the representation should be specifically spelled out in an engagement letter.2
The source of conflict here is usually that the attorney rightfully holds all the liability for the estate planning decisions, including tax structuring, even though the financial adviser may be quite well-informed and hold strong views from having worked with other attorneys on similar planning.
For a productive relationship that acknowledges the parties’ ethical obligations to the client, the attorney should lead the structuring and drafting of the estate plan, and the adviser should broach any issues or preferences that the adviser or client has by coordinating first with the attorney.
As a financial adviser, you should be able to push the attorney on their position because of your experience working with a different attorney or on a different client matter with the same attorney. Acknowledge that attorneys may have a different risk tolerance for planning techniques or creating a potential record for audit (e.g., discussing successive spousal lifetime access trusts (SLATs) with a married couple), and that you may be encroaching on a topic that the attorney feels is theirs to address with the client. Help the attorney do their due diligence on the issue (e.g., by making available the client’s CPA) so that they’re comfortable and willing to stand behind the decision.
The bottom line: agree with the attorney on key structuring preferences or other planning items before an idea is presented to the client.
Case Study 2
In Case Study 2, the question of who the client is becomes quite tricky. With an inter vivos irrevocable trust, the hats for trustor, trustee, and beneficiary are likely worn by different people. Your contractual relationship may cover the trust accounts, but your business relationship is with the entire family, as well as the South Dakota trustee.
Who the client is for an attorney is no less complicated. But again, the attorney’s engagement letter should specify exactly who the client is. You should be wary if the attorney considers the “trust,” rather than an individual in their role with respect to the trust, to be their client.
Conflicts can arise for you or the attorney if there is a dispute among any of the three parties—trustor, trustee, and beneficiary (or among the beneficiaries)—or because of a tax audit or other regulatory action. For this reason, it is very important to understand the terms of your engagement with the trust and who may instruct you to take action on behalf of the trust.
The fact that you and the attorney represent different clients may not be obvious in the day-to-day management of the trust’s affairs. But it can cause added tension if a conflict arises among the individual family members or roles with respect to the trust.
In cases of potential or actual conflicts, each individual may need to seek independent legal counsel. Depending on the situation, the attorney who is working with the trust may need to communicate and clarify their role to the family, including refusing to divulge information about the trust to one of the parties because the attorney owes a duty of confidentiality to their client, remind the parties that they have the right to be represented by independent counsel, and, in some cases, the ethical rules may prohibit the attorney from continuing to serve on the trust matter for any of the parties.3
Trouble on the Horizon: Preserving Legal Privileges
Estate planning discussions involving a client, an adviser, and an attorney are confidential because of the adviser and attorney’s ethical obligations to the client. But “confidentiality” should not be confused with “legally protected,” and herein is the critical issue where the adviser’s involvement may create a gap in the ability of the attorney to protect client communications.
In most estate planning matters, preserving the privileges afforded to the client is not critical. But where a tax audit, government investigation, or conflict among beneficiaries and the estate is a possibility, the financial adviser and the attorney should purposefully work together to preserve the client’s legal protections.
The two legal shields at issue are (1) the attorney–client privilege, which protects confidential communications created for the purpose of the client obtaining legal advice from disclosure to third parties, and (2) the attorney work-product doctrine, which protects materials prepared by an attorney or their agent in anticipation of litigation.
By joining a conversation or receiving an attorney work-product, you as an adviser could cause the client to effectively waive either or both of these protections.4 Because these protections are interpreted narrowly, your involvement in the conversation demonstrates the lack of intent by the client to preserve the confidentiality of the communication. Even an adviser who is admitted to practice law may not be able to grant attorney–client privilege to the client regarding a communication if the adviser is not specifically providing legal advice to the client.
Without the attorney–client privilege or protecting a writing as an attorney work-product, the communication, which may contain sensitive information regarding a legal strategy, family dispute, or discussion of a client’s mental capacity, will become discoverable by the third party.
To manage the risk of waiving these protections, the attorney may ask to directly engage the financial adviser—and any other adviser such as CPA, forensic neurologist, or appraiser—under a Kovel agreement. With that arrangement, the attorney is engaging you directly as an agent of the attorney whose services are “necessary, or at least highly useful, for the effective consultation between the client and the lawyer that the privilege is designed to permit.”5
The attorney may also require you to follow certain rules for your record-keeping and communications with the client without the attorney’s inclusion.
Conclusion: Ethics Are Just Black-Letter Best Practices
In the vast majority of cases, a financial adviser and attorney will rarely need to think about their respective ethical obligations to the client, even when the assets, the organizational structure, or the family dynamics are complex. That being said, best practices should be followed between an adviser and attorney because tension and conflicts that implicate ethics may arise in subtle or unexpected ways.
Establish good communication with the attorney. Push the attorney to consider their blind spots and to explain their position on perceived risks. But refrain from presenting estate planning ideas to the client on your own when an attorney is already engaged. When a potential conflict may arise, understand why and how the attorney must protect the privileges afforded to their relationship with the client.
At the end of the day, the client wants a financial adviser and attorney who play well within the same sandbox.
Endnotes
- A discussion of the attorney–client privilege, how the involvement of, or disclosure to, a financial adviser may cause the privilege to have been waived by the client, and the attorney work product doctrine are beyond the scope of this article.
- Wolven, Lauren J., et al. 2026, January 13. “Making 1 + 1 > 2—Keys to Effective and Ethics-Savvy Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration.” Presented at the 60th Annual Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning.
- The American College of Trust and Estate Counsel Foundation. 2023, March. The ACTEC Commentaries on the Modern Rules of Professional Conduct. Sixth Edition.
www.actec.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/ACTEC_Commentaries_6th_Rev.pdf. - Cavallaro v. United States, 284 F.3d 236 (1st Cir. 2002).
- United States v. Kovel, 296 F.2d 918 (2d Cir. 1961).