When Should Financial Planners Refer Clients to Long-Term Addiction Treatment?
Certified Financial Planners (CFPs) work closely with clients to manage their finances, investments, and overall financial planning strategies. This close relationship can provide CFPs with insights into personal issues affecting a client’s financial health, including substance use disorders (SUD). Below, we outline several circumstances under which a CFP might refer a person to long-term, chronic addiction treatment.
Who We Are
Burning Tree Ranch is a specialty program dedicated to the treatment of chronic addiction and mental health. Our program is long-term, progress-based, and highly intensive. Since 1999, we have supported countless referring professionals in delivering ethical, high-quality solutions to the clients and families they represent.
Circumstances for Referral to Long-Term Treatment
Financial Instability or Deterioration
If a client's financial situation begins to deteriorate without clear financial reasons, such as unexplained withdrawals, significant debt accumulation, or erratic investment decisions, it might indicate underlying issues like addiction.
Impact on Long-term Financial Goals
When a client's substance use disorder starts to jeopardize their ability to meet long-term financial goals, such as saving for retirement, funding education, or maintaining wealth, a CFP might consider a referral to address the root cause.
Family Concerns
If family members express concerns about a client's substance use and its impact on family finances or relationships, a CFP may suggest treatment as part of a broader strategy to protect the client’s and family's financial future.
Lack of Financial Discipline
Observing a decline in financial discipline, such as missing appointments, ignoring financial plans, or making impulsive financial decisions, can signal deeper personal problems requiring professional help.
Legal or Tax Complications
Encountering legal issues or complications with tax authorities stemming from substance use can prompt a CFP to discuss seeking treatment to mitigate these issues and protect the client's financial well-being.
Observations Informing the Need
In these scenarios, a CFP’s role is to provide financial advice and act as a trusted advisor who can guide clients toward seeking the help they need. Referring a client to long-term, chronic addiction treatment is a delicate matter, requiring sensitivity and a non-judgmental approach, always with the client’s best interests and confidentiality in mind.
Change in Financial Behavior: Sudden or uncharacteristic changes in spending, saving, or investment behavior may raise red flags for a CFP, especially if these changes negatively impact financial plans.
Physical or Emotional Indicators: While CFPs are not health professionals, they might notice physical signs of distress or emotional instability during meetings, which could hint at addiction issues.
Neglect of Financial Planning: A client who previously was engaged and proactive about financial planning but becomes neglectful or disinterested might be struggling with personal issues, including addiction.
Financial Strain Without Clear Cause: When a client experiences financial strain that usual financial challenges or market conditions cannot explain, it could indicate personal problems affecting their financial decisions.
Direct Disclosure: In some cases, clients may directly disclose their struggles with substance use to their CFP, seeking advice on how to manage their finances amid these challenges.
Integrating Addiction Treatment into Plans: A CFP's Approach
The responsibility of a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) to recommend long-term chronic addiction treatment to a client is rooted in professional ethics, a commitment to the client’s overall well-being, and the broader scope of comprehensive financial planning. While CFPs are not health professionals, their close relationship with clients over financial matters places them in a unique position to recognize when personal issues, such as substance use disorders, may be impacting financial health.
Ethical Consideration
CFPs are ethically obligated to act in the best interests of their clients. When recognizing that a client’s financial distress is linked to substance use, suggesting treatment aligns with promoting their overall well-being.
Recommendations regarding personal issues must be handled with utmost confidentiality and sensitivity. CFPs should approach the subject respectfully, protecting the client’s privacy.
Professional Judgment
Comprehensive financial planning involves more than just numbers; it encompasses the client’s life circumstances that affect their financial goals. When a CFP identifies that addiction is jeopardizing a client’s financial stability or goals, they may feel it is within their professional purview to suggest seeking help.
CFPs may observe that addiction directly affects the client’s ability to make sound financial decisions, save for the future, or manage investments wisely. Addressing these issues can be crucial for achieving the client’s financial objectives.
Commitment to Client and Beneficiaries’ Interests
While recommending treatment, CFPs can provide resources or referrals to addiction treatment professionals. This approach allows CFPs to remain within their professional boundaries while offering valuable assistance.
CFPs can help clients understand how treatment costs can be integrated into their financial plan, making seeking help more manageable and less financially daunting.
In cases where the client’s addiction affects the entire family, CFPs can also guide family members on financial strategies to help their loved one’s recovery journey.
Economic Incentives for Health: How CFPs Encourage Treatment Compliance
A Certified Financial Planner (CFP) can play a crucial role in motivating a client to seek and complete treatment for substance use disorder (SUD), especially when they demonstrate how addressing the issue aligns with securing the family’s financial well-being and future.
CREATING MOTIVATION FOR TREATMENT
- Linking Financial Health to Personal Recovery: A CFP can illustrate how addiction directly impacts financial stability and future planning. By showing the economic benefits of recovery, such as the preservation of assets, avoidance of debt, and better investment outcomes, clients may be more inclined to pursue treatment.
- Setting Financial Goals Post-Treatment: Motivation can be enhanced by setting achievable financial goals contingent upon completing treatment. This could include saving for a child’s education, planning a significant family purchase, or securing retirement, linking financial success to personal health.
- Educating on the Cost of Addiction: By detailing the financial drain caused by substance use, including the potential loss of income, increased healthcare costs, and other related expenses, a CFP can highlight the economic incentives for seeking treatment.
- Involving Family in Financial Planning: Engaging the family in financial planning can create a support system that motivates the client to seek treatment. Family members can help reinforce the idea that recovery is beneficial for the individual and the family’s collective future.
Incorporating Leverage for Treatment
- Trusts and Conditional Distributions: A CFP might suggest setting up trusts with conditional distributions based on completing a treatment program for clients with significant assets. This legal structure can serve as a powerful incentive for undergoing and completing treatment.
- Insurance and Estate Planning Considerations: Discussing how successful treatment and sustained recovery can positively affect life and health insurance rates and estate planning outcomes can serve as leverage. It highlights the broader implications of personal health on financial planning.
- Budgeting for Treatment: A CFP can assist in creating a budget that accommodates treatment costs, demonstrating that treatment is a financially viable option. This practical support can help decide to seek treatment more quickly.
- Financial Milestones: Establishing financial milestones that can be achieved post-recovery can offer a tangible incentive for completing treatment. Achieving these milestones can be linked to the client’s progress in treatment and recovery, offering ongoing motivation.
- Professional Referrals and Resources: Providing referrals to reputable treatment facilities or financing options for treatment can lower barriers to seeking help. A CFP can leverage their professional network to connect clients with the resources they need to start their recovery journey.
By utilizing these strategies, a criminal attorney can effectively motivate their client to engage with and complete necessary treatment, leveraging their legal knowledge and the support system available to the client, including family and court resources, to facilitate recovery.
Considering Long-Term Treatment for Your Client
The Need to Act
What are the circumstances under which you may refer a person to long-term, chronic addiction treatment? What are you observing that informs you of the need to act?
Fiduciary Duty
Do you have a moral or fiduciary responsibility to make a recommendation for long–term chronic addiction treatment for your client?
Motivation for Completing Treatment
What motivation for treatment might you be able to create as a trusted professional serving a family’s best interest? How might you incorporate leverage for the client to go and complete treatment?
We've Worked Closely with Finance Professionals to Refer Clients to Burning Tree for Long-Term Treatment
How Do I Know If My Loved One is a Fit for Burning Tree Ranch?
Authentic Long-Term Treatment
Burning Tree specializes in treatment for Chronic Relapse
We understand the complex, multi-faceted issues many of our families face when it comes to addiction. The circumstances of long-term residential treatment allow us to create a treatment program unlike anything else in the world.
Operating outside the limitations of a traditional 30, 60 or 90-day format, Burning Tree adheres to progress-based metrics that inform the clinical treatment team of the unique mental, emotional and spiritual needs of the individual.
We are the only treatment center in the United States that combines time-intensive residential treatment with a therapeutically coordinated aftercare program focused singularly on the treatment of chronic relapsers.
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