What we will not claim
Fiduciary is a legal duty, not a slogan, and this practice owes it to nobody
What the duty is, who owes it, and why a practice with no clients has nobody to owe it to.
AI-generated illustration. Not a real home or business.
What you will see advertised
“Fiduciary advisors who always put your best interest first.”
Quoted in order to be refused: this practice never says it, and the rest of this page says why.
The fiduciary duty is owed by an investment adviser to its clients, under federal law, and an adviser's advertisement may not imply more than it can substantiate. This practice is not registered and has no clients, so the word appears here only to explain it.
What the rules say
Each read against its source in October 2026.
- Investment advisers provide services ranging from a single financial plan for which a client pays a one-time fee to ongoing portfolio management, and every investment adviser owes its clients a fiduciary duty under the Advisers Act (Release IA-5248).
- An adviser's advertisement may not include an untrue statement, a statement it cannot substantiate, a misleading implication, or benefits without fair and balanced treatment of the risks (17 CFR 275.206(4)-1).
The sources, to read in full:
What we say instead
A registered investment adviser owes its clients a fiduciary duty under federal law: a duty of care and a duty of loyalty. This demonstration practice is not registered and owes no one that duty, so it never calls itself a fiduciary.
Every way of being paid has a pull in it. A flat fee can reward doing less work; an hourly fee can reward taking longer; a year of planning can reward keeping you as a client. A real planner names these and tells you how it handles them: here, the scope of every plan is written down before it starts, every hours estimate is in writing, and the year of planning ends by itself.
- We do not call ourselves fiduciaries.
Why planners' websites say it, and why it doesn't hold
The word sounds like a promise of loyalty, and in a trade paid in so many different ways, loyalty is what people most want to hear about. Printed beside a smiling team, it seems to settle whose side the planner is on before anybody has asked.
The rules above treat it as a duty that comes with an advisory relationship, not as a quality a practice can give itself. It is owed by an adviser to the clients it actually advises, and the second rule above is why a website cannot borrow the word for a relationship it does not have. This practice advises nobody: it has no clients and no filing, so there is no relationship for the duty to belong to, and the word could only be a slogan here.
What a planning practice can honestly say, and do
What a site can honestly do is put its promises where a reader can hold it to them, in a written agreement signed before any work:
Before any paid work there is a written agreement: what the plan or the hours will cover and what they won't, the fee in dollars, when it is billed, and how either of us can end it. Nothing is billed before you sign.
And it can tell a reader how to find out what a real practice is and who works for it:
You can look up any real adviser, and the people who work for it, at adviserinfo.sec.gov, the SEC's public database, which covers advisers registered with a state as well. A real practice gives you its name exactly as it appears there; this demonstration practice will not be found, because it does not exist.
What to ask any planner
Put them to any planner before you sign anything. A plain answer tells you something, and so does a vague one.
- Do you owe me a fiduciary duty for everything you advise me on, or only for some of it?
- Is that duty written into the agreement I would sign?
- When you recommend something, how are you paid if I act on it?
- Which conflicts do you have, and where are they written down?
- Where can I look you up to see that you are registered?
The other things this site will not claim
Ask for a first meeting
A first meeting costs nothing, gives no advice and asks nothing of you afterwards: about forty-five minutes, at the office or by video. The office replies in office hours.