‘Love and respect’: Navigating the complexities of advising couples

Speaking with ifa, senior financial planner at Rising Tide Financial Services Rebecca Pritchard said there are some unique complexities involved in providing financial advice for couples.

Pritchard explained that it can often feel as though there are three parties involved – each individual partner and the couple as an entity.

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“All three have different perspectives and different needs that need to be addressed. So it’s often like going from an individual to a couple is actually like tripling the relationship management that you need to do,” Pritchard said.

She also noted that advisers need to be mindful of the different styles of communication that partners may have and ensure each party is understanding and has adequate opportunity to contribute to the process.

“Acknowledging different styles is really important to give the requisite space to think and to form opinions on things. But I think, largely, it’s also helping couples to understand that having different styles is really normal,” Pritchard said.

“It’s really common to see one person who is quite dominant in the conversation, either that was because they have an energetic personality or because they’re the one who manages money or takes that sort of team captain role in their household and ensuring that the other person gets their time.

“Really validating that quieter person, or the person who is not team captain, that their opinion is just as relevant and that their voice is important in the conversation, that they have decision-making power in the conversation as well.”

When advising a couple, Pritchard said it’s not uncommon for disagreements to arise but they can also be signs of deeper issues that advisers are not equipped to solve.

“Respecting different goals is actually less of a financial planning challenge and more of a relationship management one, because generally speaking, couples are prepared to support their partner’s goals within reason,” she said.

“Oftentimes, when couples are not seeing eye to eye on this, it is actually a red flag that there’s going to be underlying challenges in the relationship, which no amount of financial planning is going to solve.”

She added that when working with a couple, advisers can find themselves “facilitating a conversation, at its most generous, or being a mediator, at its most challenging”.

Pritchard further noted the importance of advisers being able to facilitate these conversations with couples if and when the relationship breaks down.

“We encourage any client to come to the conversation with love and respect for their partner and, whilst perhaps in a relationship breakdown that love might have been eroded, that you can still approach the conversation with respect,” she said.

“Again, each person’s perspective, whether that is either of the individuals or the couple as an entity on its own, [needs to] get the space and the respect that it deserves.”

Pritchard also issued a challenge to advisers who may find they tend to favour one party over the other, regardless of whether or not this is done intentionally, to make a point of shifting focus to the other member of the couple.

“The reality is that there is a lot of advisers out there who are used to working with a male member of the couple, and if that’s the case, I would really challenge them to get to know the other member of the couple or get to know the quiet member of the couple, regardless of gender,” she said.