Where the estate-planning file goes when an advisor leaves

When an advisor leaves a firm with several advisors, the signed estate-planning documents stay with the household. The work still open on the advisor’s last day needs someone new. Suppose, hypothetically, one of that advisor’s households has seven funding letters: five confirmed by the institutions, one mailed with no reply yet, and one the clients have not signed. An annual review meeting with the household is on the calendar for March. None of that is finished, and all of it sits in whichever account the advisor used to coordinate the plan’s follow-up.

Whether clients follow a departing advisor is their decision. The question here is narrower. On the day someone leaves, can the firm see every household’s open estate-planning work and hand it to someone else?

What the household already has

The clients signed the will, the trust and the powers of attorney, and the originals went home with them. Nothing here suggests a firm should hold documents back from a client.

A departure puts the working file behind the documents at risk. That file holds the intake answers the documents were generated from, the inventory of accounts still to be retitled, the record of which funding letters went out and which institutions confirmed, who approved each letter and when, and the date of the next review. It lets someone other than the original advisor pick up the follow-up without starting over. A firm cannot rebuild it from the household’s binder, which holds the signed documents and none of the correspondence with institutions.

What is open on the last day

Go back to the hypothetical household. The five confirmed letters are finished. The other two are not, and they stall in different ways if nobody owns them. The mailed letter is waiting on an institution. If no one follows up, the account stays titled in the clients’ names and outside the trust, which is how a signed revocable trust ends up unfunded. The unsigned letter is waiting on the clients, who may not know that the advisor who was reminding them has left.

The March meeting sits on one advisor’s calendar. If the calendar leaves with the advisor, the meeting does not happen, and the firm finds out when the household calls with a question the meeting would have covered. Each of these open items was attached to one person’s workload, and a departure removes that person from the firm’s systems on a particular day.

Whose account the work lives in

Firms tend to land in one of three arrangements, and each behaves differently when someone leaves.

In the first, an advisor signed up individually and pays personally or through an expense report. The households, the letters and their history sit under that advisor’s login. When the advisor leaves, the account goes too, and the firm has whatever copies someone thought to save.

In the second, the firm pays for the account, but it is set up so that each advisor sees only their own households and nobody at the firm has a wider view. Reaching a departed advisor’s files then depends on what the vendor can do after the fact.

In the third, the firm holds the account and whoever manages it can see every household. A departure becomes an assignment change: the households move to another advisor, and the unanswered letter and the March meeting move with them.

The arrangement also decides whose name the household has been seeing. Where the account and its brand settings belong to the firm, the portal and the emails carry the firm’s name, and a departure changes the advisor the household talks to without changing the name on anything. Where the account belongs to one advisor, the plan has been presented under that advisor’s name or the vendor’s, and that presentation leaves with the account. White-label covers a range of arrangements, and whether the brand belongs to the firm or to an individual advisor is part of that range.

What to settle before anyone leaves

A firm can answer the departure question now, while every advisor is still there.

• Find every account. List each estate-planning login in use at the firm, including any an advisor set up personally. The firm cannot see a household served from a personal account.
• Confirm a manager can see every household. Someone other than the assigned advisor should be able to open each household’s file, including its funding status and next review date.
• Put reassignment on the departure checklist. The step belongs next to revoking system access, with a name for who receives each household and a date.
• Decide who contacts the household. A household with open funding letters needs to hear from someone who knows what is outstanding, whichever advisor it ends up with.

The file is what makes that last call useful. An advisor who has the funding record can tell the household which institution has not answered and which letter still needs their signatures, instead of asking the clients what they remember sending.

This is the same test as reconstructing a household’s file without calling anyone, applied to a different event. A firm whose records answer questions without the original advisor in the room can absorb a departure. The questions a firm should put to a network about exit terms, covered in who chose your estate-planning platform, apply one level up.

How Bancroft handles it

The Firm tier is sold to the firm: $799 a month with one advisor seat included and $249 a month for each additional seat, with no per-document generation fees on any plan. The firm owner holds the account. The brand settings on that account, including the custom domain, colors, fonts and logo, are what member advisors use by default.

The owner and any firm admin can see every household assigned to an accepted member. Either of them can reassign a household from one member to another, and the firm’s activity log records the change.

When a member is removed, the member’s households move to the firm owner in the same step that ends the membership, so no household is left without an assigned advisor. The removal is recorded in the firm’s activity log. The departing advisor’s access to those households ends with the membership, and any open sessions are signed out. The seat stays on the subscription until the owner reduces it, and the owner can then reassign each household to whoever takes it over. The team management help article walks through both steps.

The open work moves because it is attached to the household. Each funding letter carries its own status and dates from approval through mailing to confirmation, so whoever takes over can see how long an institution has had a letter. Households receive reminders about approved letters they have not yet mailed. Once a plan is more than eleven months old, the platform sends the household its annual review reminder and notifies whichever advisor is assigned at the time, so the reminder for a reassigned household reaches its new advisor. The household’s Digital Safe stays with the household at no charge.

To see a reassignment on a firm account, book a demo.