Jason Howell Company — FAMILY Wealth Management

Who we serve

For your parents, in their eighties and nineties

Older parents often hold real assets inside an advisory relationship set up forty years ago, with a portfolio that no longer fits their age. They will rarely raise it themselves. We can open that conversation gently and coordinate it with the rest of the family plan.

What tends to be going on

The pattern repeats often enough to describe plainly. A couple in their late eighties has substantial assets, an adviser they have worked with since the 1980s, a portfolio built for someone thirty years younger, and estate documents drafted before two of their grandchildren were born. Nothing is wrong, exactly. Nothing has been looked at either.

They will usually not raise it. Reviewing the arrangement means questioning a relationship that has lasted decades, and often means admitting that the details have become harder to hold. Adult children see the problem sooner and are the least well-positioned to raise it, because from a parent's side the conversation can sound like an audit or a claim on the estate.

Handled carefully, it is neither. The first pass is almost always documentary rather than financial: locating the current estate documents, confirming who holds powers of attorney, checking that beneficiary designations still name the people the family expects, and establishing whether the trusts that were drafted were ever actually funded. Unfunded trusts and stale beneficiary designations are common, and both override the will.

Only after that does the portfolio itself become the useful conversation. And it is genuinely a conversation — the aim is not to move accounts. Plenty of these reviews end with the existing arrangement left in place and three specific things corrected, which is a good outcome.

What we focus on here

  • 01

    Documents before portfolios

    Powers of attorney, beneficiary designations, and whether the drafted trusts were ever funded. Stale designations override a will, and they are the most common thing a decades-old arrangement has left behind.

  • 02

    An entry point that is not an audit

    The conversation is opened as a review of the family's overall picture, with the parents present and their existing adviser acknowledged rather than displaced. That framing is what makes it possible at all.

  • 03

    Coordinated with the generations below

    Care costs and gifting decisions in this generation change what is available in the others. The review feeds the same plan rather than sitting beside it.

Common questions

How do I talk to my parents about their finances?

Most families find it easier as a review of documents rather than of decisions. Confirming where the estate paperwork is, who holds powers of attorney, and whether beneficiary designations are current is practical and hard to hear as criticism — and it surfaces the issues that matter most, since unfunded trusts and stale designations override a will.

Do my parents have to leave their current adviser?

No. Many of these reviews end with the existing relationship left in place and a small number of specific items corrected. Jason Howell Company acts as a fiduciary and is compensated by its clients, not by moving accounts, so a review that concludes nothing should change is a legitimate outcome.

This page describes how Jason Howell Company works with families in this situation. It is general information, not investment, tax, or legal advice, and it does not account for any individual circumstances.

Most families are more than one of these

That is usually the point — the situations overlap, and the decisions in one change the answers in the others.