The Importance of “Trusted Contacts” On Your Financial Accounts

Most estate planning assumes you are either completely coherent and in charge of your money, or someone else has legally taken over through a power of attorney. However, real life is messier than that. There is usually a long stretch in between, sometimes years, where someone is still handling everything themselves and mostly doing fine. Nothing has been diagnosed, and by every legal measure that person is still perfectly in charge of their own affairs.

Most financial institutions have added a new tool in recent years called a “trusted contact” for exactly this middle ground. A trusted contact is someone you authorize your custodian, Fidelity or Schwab, in our case, to call if they cannot reach you or if they see something on your account that worries them. They cannot move money, place trades, or often even see your balances. All they can do is pick up the phone and confirm you are okay, or tell us that something isn’t right.

One of the biggest reasons to do this is financial fraud. Americans age 60 and older reported losing about $7.7 billion to fraud in 2025, a 59% jump in a single year (Source: FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center). These risks are clearly becoming more common, as I’ve written about before. Everything is getting more sophisticated. The clumsy grammar that used to give away a phishing email is gone. The tools got better, and the people using them figured out that retirees tend to have the largest balances and the most patience for an unexpected phone call. 

Here are a few examples of how a trusted contact might work in practice.

1) An advisor is on a call and hears someone in the background coaching the client toward a transfer.

2) A client calls multiple times about the same check and does not seem to absorb the answer.

3) Someone is unreachable for three weeks during what turns out to be a hospital stay, and the accounts get frozen because nobody can confirm they are alive and well.

In each case, the fix is one phone call to somebody who knows the situation. The trusted contact needs to be 18 or older, reachable, level-headed, and looking out for you. Once you pick someone, tell the person you named them. A call from Schwab about a relative's account goes a lot better when it is not the first time they're hearing about any of this. 

Here are the steps to add a trusted contact at Fidelity or Schwab.

Fidelity - Log in and go to fidelity.com/trustedcontact, or find it under Profile and Preferences. Select Add a Trusted Contact, enter their name, phone number, and address, note your relationship to them, and submit. The change takes effect immediately. 

Schwab - Log in and click the person icon in the upper right. Select Trusted Contact, then Add Trusted Contact. Enter their information and submit.

If you would rather not do it online, either firm will take a paper form, or send me a note and our team will get it set up for you.

Happy Planning, 

Alex 

This blog post is not advice. Please read disclaimers.