Posts Tagged "life insurance"

Secret Children

Posted by Preet on Sep 29, 2009 | 4 comments

I thought I would share a quick story today. Years ago I had sat down with a prospective client after having put on a seminar for a small group of investors. The investor and I had gone through the regular first steps of putting together a financial plan: we explored and defined his goals, got all the details of his current situation and I was about to leave to do the number crunching when he walked me to my car after the meeting only to make a confession. He hadn’t told me of one other goal of his: he had a secret love child who was almost 20 years old and he wanted to make sure that he received an inheritance, but didn’t ever want his wife to find out. At first I thought he was joking, but he was serious.

He didn’t become a client in the end, but I had discussed he should look into setting up a life insurance policy as the death benefit would pass outside probate and not become a matter of public record (unlike the stuff that does go through probate).

You certainly see a lot of the same situations when working as a financial advisor, but I’m sure all financial advisors have a few stories that catch them off guard.