When your clients rely on you to guide their family wealth planning, there are many inheritance issues you must address. Here, we’ll focus on just one of the concerns you may encounter when putting wealth transfer strategies into action: helping clients transition a business to the next generation.

As a financial planner, you're not expected to handle all of the difficulties that arise when your client is going through a divorce. But what you can do? Protect his or her financial security for the future.

Whether you're hoping to specialize in divorce planning or just working with divorcing clients as the need arises, it's important to take a multifaceted approach. From establishing a spending plan to protecting jointly held assets, here are some key areas on which to focus.

As part of Commonwealth's Advanced Planning team, I can tell you that divorce financial planning is becoming a hot topic among our advisors. Like them, you may be wondering if this could be a potential route for your business. To shed some light on this niche opportunity, read on for five common questions (and answers) that we get from advisors considering this specialty.

When it comes to planning for retirement income for those clients who have a history of working in both the public and private sectors, things can get tricky. Specifically, there are two legislative provisions—the windfall elimination provision (WEP) and the government pension offset (GPO)—designed to prevent these individuals from receiving their full pensions and social security benefits, which can drastically affect how much retirement income they receive.

Working with elderly clients can present a unique set of challenges. For one, seniors are a major target for elder financial abuse and fraudulent schemes. For another, they have a different mind-set than that of younger generations. They are more fearful of risk, but also tend to be more trusting and, therefore, more susceptible to abuse.