Advisers take on challenge of clients with Alzheimer’s

Suzanne Hall knows firsthand how difficult it is to watch a family member struggle with Alzheimer’s disease.

Ms. Hall, vice president at The Financial Consulate Inc. of Hunt Valley, Md., was overwhelmed when her mother was diagnosed with the affliction in January 2005. She became her mother’s primary caregiver and took charge of all her financial affairs.

Ms. Hall’s mother died in August 2006.

The experience led her to urge her advisory firm to create a special department to help people with Alzheimer’s. As part of that team, Ms. Hall travels to clients’ homes, where she assists with financial matters, helps them pay bills and, when necessary, find nursing homes or assisted-living centers.

“I want to be a resource for people because I know the panic I felt,” said Ms. Hall, whose firm manages about $170 million in assets.

Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia have become a new challenge for financial advisers as clients live longer. The aging of baby boomers — who may be dealing simultaneously with spouses and parents afflicted with the disease — means that advisers increasingly are dealing with this problem.

In fact, many advisers are altering their practices and doing different types of planning to accommodate such clients.

For instance, advisers who suspect that a client may have the beginnings of Alzheimer’s often speed up their long-term-planning efforts, rushing to update wills, change beneficiaries and create trust documents while the client is still mentally aware and can sign legal documents.

These advisers sometimes arrange early-morning meetings with Alzheimer’s clients because of the phenomenon known as “sundowning,” in which the afflicted become confused and agitated in the late afternoon and early evening.

“You have to make plans early in the process, and typically early in the morning, because people with Alzheimer’s in the sundowner’s phase are often pretty competent when they wake up,” said Norris Edmonson, a financial adviser who also has firsthand experience with Alzheimer’s. He managed all his mother’s financial matters until she died in 2001.

“But even in that early phase, you don’t know if they’ll be themselves by next Tuesday,” said Mr. Edmonson, who is also a certified public accountant with Beacon Financial Advisors Inc. in Conyers, Ga.

He said he’s had to reschedule meetings with Alzheimer’s clients when it became clear that they were unaware and not able to sign legal documents.

Working with clients suffering from Alzheimer’s can be a delicate balancing act. Advisers want their clients to be independent for as long as possible, yet at the same time, they must prepare for the future by drawing up a power-of-attorney and other documents, and then watch for signs to put them into effect.

While he knows that he did all that he could for his mother, Mr. Edmonson said, some family members have questioned some of his decisions. That has led him to be even more sensitive to a client’s needs if he suspects that they may be developing Alzheimer’s.

Mr. Edmonson said he now leaves nothing to chance. The minute a client appears to have memory problems, he urges that the family draft a trust with at least three trustees to be charged with managing the assets.

In 2008, about 5.2 million people were living with Alzheimer’s, according to the Chicago-based Alzheimer’s Association. That number is expected to grow to 16 million by 2050.

Those numbers have not escaped the Financial Planning Association and the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors.

The Denver-based FPA and Arlington Heights, Ill.-based NAPFA offer educational sessions about this issue. At its national conference in Washington in June, NAPFA will host a session about aging parents that will delve into Alzheimer’s. The FPA will feature a session in October at its national meeting in Anaheim, Calif. The session will focus on how advisers should proceed when a client has dementia.

Getting family members involved as soon as possible when a mother or father has Alzheimer’s is the key, said David Bright, a physician who doubles as an adviser.

He practices medicine part time and began work as an adviser part time 18 months ago at Gold Medal Waters Inc. in Boulder, Colo., which manages about $25 million in assets.

Dr. Bright’s mother has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and is living in an assisted-living facility. He believes that the most important thing an adviser can do is to ensure that family members are part of the conversation early on and to draft legal documents to protect the client.

In his medical practice, Dr. Bright has diagnosed many Alzheimer’s patients over the years and foresees making similar diagnoses among his new, and separate, financial clientele.

“The biggest thing is the intergenerational communication and getting other family members in the loop with the client’s permission,” he said. “Otherwise, it can become very difficult.”

E-mail Lisa Shidler at [email protected].