Kristin Hetzer, CFP and author of Valle Egypt, discusses a sensitive and unfortunately prevalent topic—financial elder abuse.

Julie. I’m excited for our audience to hear from Kristen Hetzer here today, but I want to let everybody know kind of how I found out about Kristen. And I, as many of our listeners know, Julie, you and I do a number of events for financial advisors and their clients across the country. And I was speaking at a fairly large conference, and we were talking about cognitive health. And I shared a story about how in my own family, my grandmother, 20 some years, 30 years ago, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s at the time, was the victim of financial abuse at the hands of a professional and financial advisor, actually. And it took me quite a long time to eventually reach a settlement with that firm which kind of took part in that abuse of my grandmother. But I share that story briefly from the stage, and Kristen had her contacted me personally through the mail and one every gifted me a copy of her book, Valley Egypt, and asked that, you know, I take a look at it and she hoped it would be helpful to me. Well, after she did that and read the book, I just thought, wow, what a great person to have on the Human Centric Investing podcast.

Well, John, and I know you’ve shared your personal story with me in the past, and I think we’ve all had a story, sadly, some version of a story like that touch our lives, whether it’s in our family or a close friend of the family or for our financial professional audience, a client. And it’s it’s so sad, but it seems to be more and more prevalent. And so I think having Christine’s knowledge and expertise in her book Valley Egypt and having her as a guest on the podcast is such a timely issue. And so I’m so excited that she’s here with us today to share her story and experience. Although very heavy, I think that we can all learn so much from what she went through.

So we titled this episode, Julie How to Recognize Financial Elder Abuse with Your Clients. And I think, you know, one of the keys to that is listening to Kristen’s story and to a certain extent placing us all in her shoes and hearing what happened along the way that might serve to be a red flag for others. I think if we personalize it to that extent, and I’ll guess that many of our listeners have either counseled clients that wound up in this kind of situation or maybe had it happened in their own families. So, Julie, why don’t you share everybody with everyone a little bit about Kristen’s background and why we invited her here on the podcast today.

Kristen Hetzer are began her career in the investment business as an account executive with Merrill Lynch. She is a chartered market technician, certified investment management analyst and certified financial planner. Kristen provides portfolio management services to individual investors, trusts, corporations and qualified retirement plans.

So without further ado, let’s listen in on a conversation that Julie and I recently had with Kristen Hetzer about her experience with financial manipulation and elder abuse. Hi, I’m John.

And I’m Julie.

We’re the hosts of the Hartford Fund’s Human Centric Investing podcast.

Every other week, we’re talking with inspiring thought leaders to hear their best ideas for how you can transform your relationships with your clients.

Let’s go.

Kristin, welcome to the Human Centric Investing podcast. We’re so excited to have you here with us today.

Thank you. I’m excited to be here.

Kristin, you know, the topic of elder abuse is something near and dear to my heart. I had a very dear relative who was subject to it herself. In her case, it was at the hands of some professionals that she was working with. And it was quite disturbing and quite distressing. And I learned a lot through it. But your book, Valley Egypt, very, very interesting and dealing with this topic of abuse and sometimes for financial professionals, they’re surprised when they find out that that abuse often happens through family members. But if I can take a step back and ask you about the book, what why did you write it? Kind of what were the circumstances and kind of what was the message that you’re trying to get across?

Well, when my father died, he was the second parent to pass, and he died about 20 years after my mother. And I had been a successor trustee. And I also was their financial advisor for four decades. I’ve been in the business since the early 1980s. And unfortunately, the last. Eight years of my father’s life, we were estranged essentially because of a number of things that we went through in the book that I never really understood everything at the time. I was raising my family and I knew their estate plan was all set. They had an estate attorney. Everything had been drawn up and I just assumed that everything would be taken care of. Essentially what had happened is my brother convinced my father to move all the accounts, even though I was a successor trustee away from me. So there was no oversight and I had assumed that everything would be handled properly. So anyways, we just that was a real nail in our relationship. And then when he died and I went to the funeral and I had cut off a lot of my emotions because it was just an incredibly painful experience. I had done a really good job for my parents. They trusted me. It was all very hurtful. So when he died, a lot of things came up while we were each of us. There were six children given a packet after the funeral, which I read on the plane ride back to my home, and everything was changed from what I knew to be true. And I had all of the documents in my files. I’d been a financial advisor for decades. I had all of their accounts for decades, so I had everything. So I just started. Well, looking at it. And one of the first things I did was call the law firm that had been that had set up the estate plan. And had been their attorney, their law firm for since the 1980s. And that attorney was no longer their attorney. My brother had changed it. And that immediately set off all kinds of alarm bells. So I had this whole situation that was fairly complicated. I’m a certified financial planner. Been in the business for decades. I’ve heard some of these stories, but nothing like this. And it was just really came to me divine. Whatever. You have to write a book, you have to write this down. Number one, it was very complicated, very complicated, a lot of manipulation. And but I also thought it would be interesting if I didn’t write it down. No one would believe it because it was so complicated. But primarily I did it to help others. Most. I think this story is rare in that from the standpoint it’s very complicated, multilayered. You’re really dealing with some very crooked characters. But I think it’s a story that can help others. And it has. I’ve had many friends, families, clients that have read it and have acted on their own estate plans because of what they learned through reading this book.

So, Kristen, it’s interesting to hear you as a seasoned financial professional, CFP, obviously someone who is very knowledgeable in this area. You know, share this story that this happened to to you in your own family. And obviously, you know, that goes to show that it can really, truly happen to any of us. And I think just the fact that we’re talking about this today is is so refreshing. And it’s interesting you said that it was so important for you to document it so that others could learn from it. Could we start to peel back the layers of the complexity? Because it sounds like it obviously was a very complex situation. And maybe, you know what what were some of the conditions that that happened or what were some of the layers, if you will, so that our listeners today could can learn from your situation or start to recognize some of those, you know, red flags, if you will?

Well, what’s interesting, many people are individuals with wealth. They either have a will or now it’s very common to have a trust because you don’t have to go through probate. And people assume I have a trust. So everything is going to be done properly and I don’t have to worry about anything. But that isn’t the case because my parents had trust and they had everything set up. They had bought a large farm back in the 1950s and my father was also a surgeon. So pretty much his medical practice financed the farm. And. What they did. At some point they got to the point they wanted to retire and which they did. And my brother, who had dropped out of college and pretty much my father had supported him, you know, working on the farm. They reached an agreement where he would get. You know, a good sizable part of the farm. And then the rest of the children, there were six children. It would be divided. So there were amendments, there were loans, there were all these conditions. And what was interesting so all of this was set up, but at my father’s death and my mother had died 20 years previously, so her assets were put into what’s called an irrevocable trust, which is equal. Nothing can be done with an irrevocable trust. No one can touch that. Well, their little home was placed in the irrevocable trust and her assets, which weren’t touched until the last couple of years of my father’s life, did extremely well because they weren’t subject to all my father’s estate, which my brother ended up getting control of. And so essentially they were both trustees, co trustees of my mother’s irrevocable trust, and I ended up transferring all the assets out of that to. And you just think and people think, well, how can that happen? How can you do that with an irrevocable trust? And the the bottom line and I hate to say it, but if you have crooks as trustee, they can do whatever they want. And this is what I think is the most important point to come from our discussion is you may have a trustee, you may have trustees, but you do have to go a step further. Who are your trustees? How trustworthy are they? Are Do you have any oversight? Because essentially my brother ended up being the trustee of this estate, which basically he figured out all of the amendments to to change to go so everything would go to him. And so it does involve a farm and land and properties and all of those things. And you have estate plans that were set up and financed. But. And how did he do it? Well, like any crook would do, he enlisted the help of an attorney that helped him do all these things and transfer titles into his name and all of this.

So So, Kristin, as you look back on that situation, if if you had, is that one of those things where you look back on it and say, you know, I, I should have noticed this or I didn’t pay much attention to it because I didn’t think any. Is there anything that you look back and say, wow, that really should have clued me in when that happened, other than even prior to your father’s death, was there any signs? Because I agree with you, some of the some of the worst situations that I’ve even either been involved with or have heard other financial advisors talk about have been situations where the clients say, well, I have a trust and that’s it. That’s all you. They don’t want to get into the complexity of it. They don’t understand it. They tend to look at all attorneys as equal if you’re an attorney you’re an attorney. Right. But what I’m hearing through your story is, you know, vetting these professionals in my own experience is that was really key. But for our listeners, is there anything that you would say looking back would have clued you in to what was going to happen? Or was it just a matter of fate? And sooner or later you would be kind of broadsided with this information? Was there any clues along the way?

You know, you tend to kind of think, well, family, you know, that family member would never do that. And and this is also a really important point. When my parents set up their plan and they dissolved the farm and they figured everything out the way they wanted to, and they had their trust. They sat with my brother and I, and they said, Look, you are both co trustees. This is what we want. This is our plans. However, there are four other children that knew nothing of this. So I knew all about it. The brother, the older brother knew all about it, but the other children didn’t. So they had no idea because my parents were. Old school. They didn’t discuss money. They didn’t discuss. That wasn’t a topic. They didn’t discuss their money, their assets with their other children. I knew everything because I was a financial advisor. They started with virtually nothing and various $5,000, and we did extremely well, of course, through the 1980s and particularly in the 1990s. Pretty much made a small fortune. And what had happened? My mother, my father had had strokes. After the trusts were set up and he was just practicing surgeon, he was very domineering. Forceful type person. But in I learned a lot of things. I mean, my mother took care of much of the transactions and business after my father had his initial stroke. And then she died. She died of cancer. Well, I did notice after she died, there were things that were going on. Money was transferring out to these two siblings, and I brought it up with my father. I brought it up several times, which resulted in me being cut out of them. You know, basically, that’s why I transferred the accounts away from me because I was bringing I was going, What are you doing? You need you need to look out. This isn’t this isn’t what you should do because you have to have funds if you need to eventually go into a rep and care center. All of these things, I would bring up all these things. Well, there his answer through the result of the manipulation that he was subjected to was to just eliminate me as as having anything to do with the accounts. And so I knew I knew that this was no good. And I knew there was a lot of shenanigans going on. But I was successful myself. I had a small family and my thought was okay. But I mean, they’re not going to take everything. We’ve built this substantial estate, even if he does all his little, you know, shenanigans, you know, day to day, it’s there’s still what can they do with the properties? Because this is all in a trust. I had no idea that we that everything would be would be changed. I had no idea. But I did know. And that was what created true. First of all, I’d never had any client do that to me and I was very hurt. I was upset, I was angry. And it went on with internal emotions. I tried to talk to my dad about it, and then that resulted in our being estranged and a resulted in me totally cutting off my feelings because I could not I could not go through this every day of this just so I just cut everything off. And nothing really reawakened until the funeral. Until after the funeral, if that makes sense.

It does make sense. After your father passed and you found you were given all the documents. Was it all signed, sealed and delivered? Was there any going back and fixing what had been done? Or was was it everything a done deal, everything that your brother had changed? Well, at that point.

Yeah. Like I said, there was. So I have other siblings and I was named the successor trustee and it was my obligation to fulfill my duties. And I had to my two youngest brothers that were essentially completely shut out of everything. And they worked on this farm. They work, they put in, they worked very hard. And all of this is in the book. So they were essentially said, you get nothing. The older brother gets everything, Go away, be quiet. It’s all done. And and I said, no, no. And so I what initially I did was, okay, who deals in this financial manipulation, elder abuse, who is which now it’s becoming it’s it’s actually the fastest growing area of a law practice. It’s my understanding and I did find a law firm that was in the the city and they had a an attorney that specialized in this. And I talked to them. I talked to them, and they said, yeah, they thought I had a case because I had all the documents. And and so I just started, okay. And this and this and this. And I he said, the best thing to do is file a petition. You know, you don’t want to just file a petition that requires them to respond to your questions because I was like, well, how can these assets be in an irrevocable trust And now they were transferred to someone else. How can that be that, you know, that isn’t proper, that isn’t what was laid out. And there is so many things that are laid out in the book. There were loans that my brother took against the estate that just, you know, disappeared. And so I had everything and I presented it all. And what one of the things he initially he had the older brother had said that I had borrowed money from my parents and hadn’t paid back. So he came that I owed the state, I don’t know, 150,000 or something like that. Well, I responded, Well, here’s where I paid it back. Here’s all the interest, here’s all the documents. So every time I would respond and I respond with all these questions and then his attorney, he hired the very top law firm to represent him in that in this particular state would come back. They would never answer anything. They’d come back with all of this. Just it was just really what you probably see in other cases, like, for example, maybe divorce or other types of cases where they just come back with irrelevant and it just ends up being a lot of paper and nothing was was answered and this went on. So I figured because I had everything, I figured everything would be resolved and he would go, okay, you’re right. Well, I’ll give these assets to the younger brothers and we’ll I’ll be fair about it because you have everything. But he didn’t he never admitted anything. He delayed and had all these tactics and the attorney had all these tactics to just come back with all kinds of irrelevant stuff for me to to to give them. So when I month after month while the the attorneys fees for me and I was paying out of my own pocket started out 10,000 a month and there are 20,000 a month and there was you know so it was really horrible And and I’m I just said enough is enough. We need to get this resolved. Well, I had all the facts and I wasn’t concerned because the facts were what my parents wanted. I had numerous documents that showed what what they intended and what they signed and so forth. And so the first thing was mediation, mediation one. But this was after several months and the older brother went in there and essentially he wasn’t willing to he wasn’t willing to accept anything and he just stormed out. So then it was it was more months of of this legal back and forth. So it’s quite it was an eye opener. I had no I had no idea of. Well, you see it through. I’ve seen it through client divorces where the attorneys will play one, you know, one person against the other, and they just end up spending a fortune. And it’s just such nonsense. So I saw firsthand this is how they make their their living. A lot of them in they they were building a high rise building in the city. And it’s just unbelievable the amount of. Corruption. And it was it was very disappointing.

So, Kristen, I imagine that your personal experience has impacted the way you deal with clients. I think it would me just knowing what I lived through. How do you counsel clients in terms of setting up their own estate plans? Are there lessons learned that you share with them in terms of or are there, as Julie said earlier, red flags? Wherever you’re listening to someone share with you kind of what’s going on? Are you more on edge now about suggesting like it seems to me like before we even get into that conversation, it’s important for the financial professional to know that trusted person or to suggest that the family, to the extent that there’s comfort, be brought into a family money talk, if you will. Right. To kind of share where everything is and what the intended use of it is. But how’s it changed your practice, having lived through what you lived through?

Well, those are those are great questions, John. I think the problem. You know, absolutely. It just tears you in. It makes you more sensitive to all these things. But let’s face it, most people, their net worth, their finances, how they want their money to go. It’s a very private, personal. Decision. And I know our family. You didn’t talk about money. You don’t talk about your money and parents. Let’s face it, some kids have a higher weighting in their feeling than others. And so there is always that bias. Like, for example, in our family, I had a brother who really didn’t have any financial skills. He’d never made any money on his own. He basically dropped out of college and lived off my parents on this farm, and he virtually had a high school education, which that he could be brilliant with that. But I’m just saying he was not financially literate. And this is the person that ended up handling this estate and taking it down to to virtually nothing. So that’s a question. I mean, it’s a hard thing because, see, my mother my mother knew this about her oldest son and that’s why she safeguarded it as much as she could, talking to me, appointing me as a successor trustee. She had voiced her concerns to others. So that’s a hard thing, because if you had gone to my. Father at the time and said, look, this guy is not trustworthy. It was a sensitive position. How would he have taken it? So it’s a it’s a real delicate situation. And I think as a financial advisor, you can only add value of listening, creating that good relationship with your clients. Some people will be very interested in in your input and others, you know, may not. But it’s it’s just a delicate, delicate situation. But I think it’s a way to get a very strong relationship with your client if you’re that that trusted overseer of their accounts.

So it sounds to me like encouraging the sharing and the dialog, at least over time. Amongst family, though, is a great place to start so that at least families understand maybe the structure and you know who is handling what and maybe a little bit more. Maybe they don’t have to understand all the zeros on the statement necessarily. But, you know, maybe what will happen when someone passes and who’s handling what and who those trusted advisers are. And maybe, again, like John said, encouraging those family money talks over time, you know, that could be a great role for the financial professional just so that families aren’t in the dark when someone passes away.

Absolutely. And I think some of the strong practices and more and more you see practices that take in an attorney, attorney, law firm or an accounting firm that they’re all part of it. So the bigger team you have, obviously, that’s a real safeguard for the clients too, because they don’t have these disparate relationships and that really helps solidify a solid situation when when when they do pass it, everything is going to be handled professionally and properly because you have that multi-layered oversight. So that’s that’s really important.

Kristin, just one last question for me. Do you think your was your father in a position from a health standpoint to make the decisions he made? We know that sometimes we struggle with cognitive issues as we age. You had mentioned your father had suffered a stroke. Was he more vulnerable as a result of aging and his overall health to this kind of manipulation, as you stated?

Well, that’s exactly what happened, and that’s what the case was built on, because I knew of the Strokes and I knew he did recover well, but there still were problems. But my father was very proud. And what was interesting is during this whole legal case, I requested five years of medical records. And I went through the medical records and I could tell by his signatures. And then also in this all comes through the books. The younger brothers witnessed the tremendous manipulation and him forcing to sign documents. They didn’t feel it was their place. They could just kind of like, well, that’s the older brother, you know, that’s where he is. But what came out from all these medical records is my father hadn’t been able to read in years and years. So he he didn’t he didn’t read. He couldn’t read. He he had had strokes and then he had small type mini strokes. And he acted like he understood and so forth. But he was absolutely cognitively impaired. There is no doubt about it. And that’s what fortunately, because I got the medical records and then you could see by the signatures and then also that the witness, other witnesses that came forward that that he was he was forced he was forced to sign documents and he didn’t have the ability to know what what he was signing.

It’s very sad.

That is very sad. Well, Kristin, for our financial professional audience, what would be the the takeaway from this episode that you would send them with is they listen to this and they pick up the phone or sit down for their next client meeting. If you had to leave them with sort of their action item after listening to your story, what would that guidance be?

Well, you know, as I mentioned, it’s a fine line. You have clients that are going to be interested in what you have to say. There’s going to be others that feel like it’s too sensitive a subject. So you kind of have to gauge what your client, what what they can hear and what they’re interested in. And I would really stress the importance of having a team and having some oversight. And I think in in my personal case, certainly the parents should have informed the other children. But more importantly, there should have been some outside oversight because some would say, okay, well, I’m the financial advisor. I mean, they could and this is my family. So maybe that’s not not good and which is fine, but you needed some oversight so that just not one child could completely manipulate an entire estate plan. And I think what I would like to convey is try and have that in-depth conversation with the client. I mean, you have to judge how far you can go and they will appreciate your insight, your empathy. And I think it just forms a stronger relationship with your client. And particularly, you know, hopefully it’s a husband and wife and any children that are involved. But you have to see how far you can go. I just find people the finance, financial information and sharing is is a very personal. And sometimes, you know, they don’t want a divorce. They want to be very careful about who they divulge this information to.

Sure. Well, Kristen, this is certainly a weighty topic. I know it’s got my gears kind of turning. But if you’re available for this, Julie and I have a slightly lighter side of our podcast. We call it The Lightning Round. And in the Lightning Round, we want to help our audience learn a little bit more about. Kristen Hetzer as a person, kind of what makes you tick, more or less. And we do this through a series of questions, top of mind answers. So they’re not very thought provoking, but we’re just interested in, you know, a little bit about who Kristen is. So if you’re game, well, we’ll play this game for a few minutes. Julie and I will ask you some questions. And again, love to hear your responses. Julie, why don’t you start?

Perfect. So, Kristen, on a scale of 1 to 10, how good of a driver are you?

How about eight?

Here you go. How about Kristin? Are you a morning person or a night owl?

No, I get up at 5:00 every morning.

There you go.

What’s your favorite holiday?

I like Christmas. No.

Would you rather read a physical book or listen to a book on Audible?

Read.

Read. What’s the best age?

I think right now it’s pretty good every I mean, if you live each day and I, I like to be outdoors. I’m a big golfer and I my life is as good as it’s ever been right now. So it’s it’s I love that.

Kristin, what’s your favorite city in the United States?

Probably where I live in the summer, which is I’m not going to say it because I don’t want other people to.

It seems to be a common theme.

But it’s in Montana. Okay. Okay.

So you said you like to be outside a lot. What’s the ideal outside temperature from your perspective?

You know, to play golf, it’s really in the in the mid 70s is perfect.

Okay. Would you rather travel to the past or to the future if you had the opportunity?

To the future.

Yeah. Are you fan of a paper to do list or a digital one?

Paper.

What did you want to do when you grew up as a little girl?

Well, you’d never know. I wanted to be a hairdresser. There you go. When I was a little girl, So I grew up out in the country, and we had a little teeny hairdressing salon that was on the river. And the lady was just wonderful. And I just thought that would be just the most wonderful, wonderful job.

Excellent.

Well, Kristen, we can’t thank you enough for joining us today on the Human Centric Investing podcast. And for our listeners, if you’re interested in Kristen’s book. Again, it’s Valley, Egypt. Here’s a copy right here. This is what it looks like. You can find it. I assume, Kristen, it’s on Amazon or other online book retailers or you can download it onto your Kindle or digital e-reader. But Kristen, thank you for sharing your story and talking about this really important topic. I think that it’s something that every financial professional comes across and I’m sure struggles with in conversation and trying to wrap his or her mind around and thinking about how to delve into the conversation. So thank you for the education and again, sharing your very difficult story and for writing about it as well to help all of us process and learn from your experience.

Thank you.

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The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the guest who is not affiliated with Hartford Funds.