Plan
TP 2026-01
Hiring an adviser is a decision most families make once a generation — so the transition itself is planned like any other decision: what moves, what doesn't, in what order, and why. Nothing is sold on day one, and taxes decide the order. This is an illustrative sample for a fictional family.
Accounts transfer in kind — the holdings move, nothing is liquidated to move them. The prior advisers are thanked, the professionals the family keeps (the CPA, the attorney) are briefed, and no investment decision is made until the whole household is mapped. A transition that starts with selling starts with a tax bill nobody budgeted.
Every account, the last tax return, the estate documents, the insurance schedule, and the professionals already in the family's life. The output is a map, not a proposal.
Custodial transfers in kind; beneficiary designations reconciled against the estate documents; account titling corrected where it contradicts them. Paperwork first — it is the cheapest place to fix the most expensive mistakes.
Each asset class assigned to the account where it is taxed least, and the relocations executed inside an agreed tax budget. The map becomes part of the household book.
The registers open: what the intake surfaced becomes a named, owned list, and the first structural decisions are queued with their rationale. The transition ends when the system is running — not when the money has moved.
A transition plan is judged by what exists when it closes: the household book was opened (the Operating Manual, rev. 01), the asset-location map entered the ledger, the Opportunity Register opened with the intake's findings as its first rows — and the questions the intake surfaced became the household's first written decisions in the Decision Register.
Operating Manual rev. 01 — the book, opened February 2026.
Opportunity Register — first rows, February 2026.
Decision Register DR-001 – DR-003 — the first written decisions.
How It Works — the engagement sequence this plan executes.
IC Memo 2026-02 — the concentration finding, decided.
Most families delay hiring the right structure because the move itself feels risky. Written down, it isn't: in kind, in order, inside a tax budget — and finished when the system runs, not when the assets land.
Read it in context: how an engagement runs · the Driftwood Record holds the whole shelf.