Much of that complexity traces back to a single root cause: the foundational estate and financial planning conversations never happened.
April is Financial Literacy Month, a campaign led by The Financial Awareness Foundation (TFAF), and we’re proud to support the TFAF’s work and their Improving Financial Awareness & Financial Literacy Movement.
The goal of Financial Literacy Month is to get individuals, families, and professionals to take their financial planning seriously before a crisis forces the issue.
It’s practical, unglamorous work. And it makes a world of difference when done right.
The Numbers Are Harder to Ignore Than Ever
A 2025 Fidelity Investments study on family financial communication put some numbers to what estate and trust professionals already know intuitively. And the findings are worth absorbing:
- More than half of parents with significant investable assets have not shared their net worth with their adult children:
- 68% have not discussed what those children may inherit, or when they may inherit it.
- 70% of parents have created a will or estate plan.
- Only 32% have shared any concrete details with their heirs.
- On the other hand, 95% of adult children believe they’re fully capable of managing an inheritance responsibly, yet one in four parents disagrees.
That gap, between plans that exist and those that have been communicated and actioned, is where problems arise. It’s also, in our experience, where estates typically become most complicated in cases where:
- Beneficiaries didn’t know what to expect.
- Family members weren’t named in documents they didn’t know existed.
- Spouses, particularly women, are left to navigate financial arrangements their partners managed alone.
The Fidelity data bears this out too: while 75% of partnered women say they could manage their finances if their partner died, only 30% have documented estate plans of their own, and fewer still have addressed power-of-attorney designations or long-term care decisions.
People often become less willing to discuss estate planning as they age, particularly after 70, when the stakes are highest. But with the right approach and information, these conversations don’t need to feel so challenging.
Your Role as a Legal or Trust Professional
If you work with clients on estate, trust, or planning matters, Financial Literacy Month is a practical opportunity to start conversations that clients might be reluctant to initiate themselves.
TFAF’s resources exist for exactly this reason. Their materials are designed for financial professionals to use directly with clients, covering estate planning fundamentals, family communication about wealth transfer, and the values-based conversations that make the logistics easier to navigate.
Their financial literacy check-up is another low-friction way to surface gaps in a client’s understanding without making the conversation feel confrontational.
A few areas worth raising with clients this month, particularly those who may have deferred the harder questions:
- Business succession planning, especially where some family members are involved in the business, and others are not.
- Distribution and equalization strategies when asset types don’t divide cleanly.
- Power-of-attorney and long-term care designations, which are frequently left incomplete, particularly for people who have historically relied on a spouse to manage financial decisions.
Leaving these considerations to chance is what allows the estates to end up in probate with missing heirs and unanswered questions.
How HeirSearch Can Help
At HeirSearch, We Find Missing Heirs A Better Way™. Since 1967, we’ve achieved a 97% success rate locating heirs across estate, trust, notice, and property matters. We do it transparently, with reasonable non-percentage-based fees and court-ready reporting. But we’d be the first to say that the ideal succession outcome for both the client and legal counsel is an estate that doesn’t require our heir search expertise.
Financial literacy, in succession, at its core, is about ensuring your clients’ lawful heirs inherit what they’re entitled to. Clear beneficiary designations, up-to-date wills, and documented estate plans that family members actually know exist are all straightforward ideas. They’re just conversations that keep getting deferred because they’re uncomfortable, which is exactly why the TFAF exists: to make these discussions easier between counsel and client.
Financial illiteracy, lack of estate planning, and families who never talk about money all have real downstream consequences in the legal and trust world. Consequences we see regularly.
We’re grateful to be in the company of organizations like TFAF that take this work seriously year-round, not just in April. We encourage professionals in the legal, financial, and trust sectors to use TFAF’s resources, share them with clients, and keep the conversation going.
To learn more about TFAF’s campaigns and access their materials, visit thefinancialawarenessfoundation.org.
If you are a fiduciary professional needing to establish heirship to satisfy the court, Our Heir Search Process | HeirSearch™. We offer no-cost, no-obligation consultations, even if you are not planning to start a search immediately.
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