Board Certified In Estate Planning - BCE

We often hear about certain professions being “board certified,” such as surgeons, psychiatrists, and accountants. Who are these boards, and why do professionals have to be certified?

Boards are professional associations that try to maintain standards in order to protect and serve the general public, i.e...you.

The Institute of Business & Finance (IBF) certifies brokers, advisers, and financial planners who are involved in any kind of estate planning. To be certified, you need to have two years of experience in any type of financial services and complete a 60-hour training course. So you can hopefully rest assured that, if your estate planner is board certified, you will be in relatively good hands.

Estate planners help their clients to preserve and distribute their “wealth” (should there be any) upon their demise. It could involve preparing a will, minimizing estate taxes, recommending the right amount of life insurance, choosing an executor, and/or filing the final tax returns. The planner might even help manage a client’s properties or financial obligations if he or she becomes incapacitated. Or, um...decapitated.

The real challenge of an estate planner might be after a client’s death (see the aforementioned decapitation thing), when they have to handle all the complaints from the heirs who feel they just got gypped in the will.