WHO WE HELP
When the situation has multiple moving pieces
Some financial situations don't fit one category. There's a sudden inheritance and a business sale at the same time. A divorce that intersects with retirement timing. A career change layered with concentrated equity. The complex tier of Keystone is for those, where the work has to coordinate across more than one major moving piece at once.
What this typically looks like
The clients in this category often arrive after working with a planner or advisor who looked at one piece of the situation and missed how the others connected. The most common pattern is two or three major events stacking up at the same time: an inheritance during a year that already has a tax-significant event happening, a business sale alongside an estate-planning need, a divorce running concurrent with a forced retirement-timing decision.
The work in these situations isn't more complicated because there are more numbers. It's more complicated because the decisions interact in ways that aren't visible until they're laid out side by side. Selling the business in year A might mean delaying the Roth conversion that was already planned for year B. Receiving the inheritance changes the asset location of the entire portfolio, which changes the after-tax return assumptions in the retirement income plan.
The complex tier of Keystone starts at $20,000 and is scoped individually based on the situation. Same six-month structure as the other tiers. Same fully refundable policy.
The patterns that usually qualify as complex
Complex isn't a synonym for wealthy. It describes a situation where multiple major financial events are converging at once and need to be coordinated as a single plan, not treated as separate projects. A few of the patterns that most often end up in the complex tier.
A business sale plus an estate plan update. The deal structure, the proceeds, the new tax bracket for the year of the sale, the charitable strategy, the estate vehicle selection, and the timing of all of it need to happen in the right order. Getting the estate structure in place before the sale closes is usually the difference between a clean transaction and a painful one.
A divorce that intersects with retirement timing or business ownership. The planning here runs in parallel with the legal work and needs to be done in coordination with the attorney, not after. How retirement accounts are split, how a closely held business is valued and allocated, how future income projections shift, and what the post-divorce financial life actually looks like are all planning work, not negotiating tactics.
A concentrated inheritance received mid-career. A large inheritance inside an existing career arc changes the saving strategy, the investment approach, the tax picture, the estate trajectory, and often the decision about whether to continue working. It's rarely the inheritance itself that needs planning. It's everything around it.
A forced or accelerated career transition. Early retirement packages, sudden severance, unexpected partnership departures. These typically land with a narrow decision window, a lump of cash or equity to handle, and no time to think carefully without structured help.
Multigenerational coordination. When the planning question isn't only about you, but also about an aging parent, an adult child receiving a gift or inheritance, or a family business that involves family members in different roles.
How the complex tier actually gets scoped
Unlike the Personal and Owner tiers where the fee is fixed, the complex tier starts at $20,000 and is quoted individually. The reason is that the work varies a lot more case to case. A divorce-timed retirement transition is a different scope than a business sale with a simultaneous inheritance.
The scoping conversation happens on the Explore Call and gets finalized in a short follow-up. I walk through what I'd expect the six months to cover, how many working meetings it would take, which outside coordinations are likely, and where the fee lands. If the scope is simpler than it first looked, it might actually fit the Owner tier, and I'll say so. If the scope turns out to be larger than a single six-month engagement, I'll say that too.
The six-month structure stays the same across tiers. The refund policy stays the same too. If you decide at any point that the engagement isn't working, the fee is refunded in full.
What the first couple of months usually look like
In the complex tier, the first meeting or two is spent on scope and sequencing. Because there are multiple moving pieces, the first priority is identifying which decisions are time-sensitive, which can wait, and what the right order of operations actually is. Getting the sequence right is usually more valuable than any single decision.
From there we move into the modeling phase, same as the other tiers, but with more scenarios and more coordination. The third and fourth meetings are where decisions start getting made and put into motion, and we stay in frequent contact with the outside professionals involved. The last meetings are implementation and closing open loops.
Because of the complexity, we also sometimes bring in a shorter cadence of check-ins between the formal meetings. That's built into the engagement, not an extra.
Questions you're probably already asking yourself
- I have two or three major financial events happening within 12 months of each other; can they be coordinated?
- I've been told my situation is "outside the normal practice" of an existing advisor. What does that actually mean for my planning?
- I'm not sure whether my situation is Owner or Complex. How do I figure out which tier makes sense?
- What does coordination look like across my CPA, attorney, and the people involved in the events themselves?
When the complex tier isn't the right fit
Not every financial situation that feels complicated belongs in the complex tier. A retirement transition alone, even a well-resourced one, usually fits the Personal tier. A business owner with standard equity comp fits the Owner tier. The complex tier is specifically for situations where more than one major piece is in motion at the same time and the planning work has to coordinate across them. If you're not sure where your situation lands, that's one of the things the Explore Call is for.
If you're not sure whether the complex tier is right for you, that's a normal question to bring to the Explore Call. We figure out the right scope on the call.