Hiring a fiduciary adviser is the moment a windfall either stays yours or starts leaking. When the money is new and the firm's name is a hundred years old, the instinct is to be grateful and sign where they point. That instinct is the most expensive one you own. You are the client. A lawyer, a trustee, a banker, and a trust provider all work for you, and the terms you set decide who comes out ahead.

Fiduciary versus best interest: know who is bound to you

Before fees or structures, settle one thing. Is the person across the desk legally required to put your interest first, or only to sell you something that is not unsuitable. In the United States a registered investment adviser owes a full fiduciary duty of care and loyalty across the whole relationship. A broker owes only a best-interest standard at the single moment of a recommendation. Britain splits advisers into independent and restricted under its Consumer Duty. Australia writes a statutory best interests duty into law. Canada's Client Focused Reforms put your interest ahead of the firm's. Ask in plain language, are you legally bound to put me first, in writing, across everything.

Adviser fees, and what free really costs

Every relationship has a price, and some of it is buried where you never feel it leave. The common model charges a percentage of assets, from about 0.25 percent to 1.5 percent a year, clustering near 1 percent. On $1 million that 1 percent is $10,000 every year, good years and bad. On $5 million it is $50,000. An estate lawyer in the United States runs $200 to $500 an hour, and most trust and will work is now a flat $1,500 to $5,000. A UK trust runs 500 to 3,000 pounds, an Australian testamentary-trust will $2,500 to $7,000, and a corporate trustee 0.5 percent to 2 percent a year. A fee-only adviser is paid by you and only by you. Ask how they get paid, and what they earn if you do nothing.

The mandate is where you set the terms

The relationship lives or dies in the engagement letter, not the brochure. It names what they do, what you pay, whether they are a fiduciary, and how you fire them. Write an investment policy statement that sets your guardrails, your risk level, your limits, and what they can buy. Decide whether the account is discretionary or non-discretionary, and grant discretion narrowly. Read every agreement for the clauses that bite, forced arbitration, liability caps, and terms stopping you from leaving with your own people. Nothing gets signed across the desk. It goes home to your own counsel first, always.

Interview at least three firms for the same job. More than half of wealthy investors speak to only one adviser before handing over the money, and the regret shows up later, when leaving is expensive. Current as of 18 June 2026, the advice rules are shifting in the US, Britain, and Australia, yet the strongest protections are still the ones you write into your own contracts. Read the full private estate analysis.