Dementia Doesn’t End Your Story. It Hands It to Someone Else.

One client shut down. Another tried to control everything. Both had to learn the same uncomfortable truth about who carries your life forward.

Over my 30 years of working with families on long-term financial planning, I have seen many difficult circumstances: terminal illnesses, loss of beloved spouses, dysfunction that rips families apart at the moment when they need to come together. But nothing is as uniquely devastating as a client who received a dementia diagnosis.

The range of reactions varies, but there are two that are the more common ones I have seen. They illustrate what makes dementia so different from other terminal diseases and how important it is to realize early that the decisions you make while you still can make decisions will make a world of difference to those who will have to make decisions for you later on.

Before I introduce them, I want to mention that it’s important to understand the anticipatory grief that comes with a dementia diagnosis. They have to live with a future where they know they will become less cognizant and capable of not only being independent, but being present in their own lives. They get told about all of the things they can’t do or soon won’t be able to do, as well as the things they need to do now while they still can. All of this really shatters their agency.

That’s why, when I work with clients who receive a dementia diagnosis, I start with questions to ease them into talking and thinking about what I can help them with. Even if the questions are rhetorical, they let the person find their own footing through their present and future circumstances. Broader studies on dementia have explored this approach for a wide range of medical, physical, and psychological discussions, and I have adapted this for my own work helping families deal with the financial planning implications of dementia.

Client 1: Mr. Frozen

He came in quiet and let his wife do the talking, even though he was still sharp, articulate, and working. He had just gotten the diagnosis and was referred to my team to do some financial planning.

After reviewing their circumstances, I asked him about previous financial decisions he had made, the ones that he was most happy with. He was not interested in being reflective. “If I’m not going to remember any of this, why am I planning anything?” Mr. Frozen said. “This is her conversation.”

I knew this was the paralysis version of grief. Everything collapses into meaninglessness because continuity is uncertain. We didn’t accomplish much during that first meeting.

The next meeting, he arrived early before his wife. I tried a different tack, asking him questions to help him reflect on his present and future selves. “You said that you don’t see the point of planning if you aren’t going to remember anything,” I said. “Does that mean that the version of ‘future you’ that really matters is the only one who remembers being you? What about a version who doesn’t?”

He didn’t answer and didn’t change expression as I went on.

“Maybe consequences still unfold after memory disappears,” I continued. “Think about your wife. When things get harder, who’s she dealing with? Maybe not the version of you sitting here now, but the later version instead. Hopefully she’s not confused, frustrated, or even scared. What would you want her experience to be like?”

Now he leaned forward and looked up.

“Right now, you’re not planning for yourself,” I said. “You’re shaping the environment she’s going to operate in with you and for you. So the real question is: Which version of you is she going to carry forward when she’s making decisions on your behalf?”

This is where AATM thinking matters. You don’t argue someone out of paralysis with optimism.

When his wife arrived, he surprised her (and me as well) by becoming more engaged. He was a construction engineer, so I had started talking about load-bearing structures:

Clear medical directives
Fewer points of friction in daily life
Explicit conversations with the people who will become his memory

I also made sure we discussed financial simplicity. He was the CFO of the house, and his finances were simply too complicated, too much in his own head, to be durable. We started imagining things that, with professional help, his family could better manage.

He then started asking better questions:

“What do I need to make clear now?”
“What decisions would make things easier for her later?”
“What would calm look like if I can’t generate it myself?”

That’s the shift—from existential freeze to practical responsibility.

What he needed in that meeting was the right framework to start action and something that reached beyond his imagined diminished future self. This small success did not solve the broader depression he was dealing with, but we did get productive when we started talking about the “tools” that could help him and his wife. He later said that we gave him some levers and showed him how to use them.

Client 2: Mrs. Control

This client had the same diagnosis window but could not have been more different than Mr. Frozen. Mrs. Control was a solo ager and fiercely independent. She came in with a binder that boomed when she dropped it on the table.

There were tabs. Color-coded sections. Spreadsheets for projected cognitive decline scenarios. Instructions for everything—down to how her coffee should be made in five years.

At first glance, it looked impressive. I’ve learned, though, that it’s something else: an expression of fear disguised as control.

“I need to make sure everything is handled exactly the way I want,” she said. “I don’t want to become a burden or be at the mercy of other people’s decisions.”

This appears reasonable on the surface, but she’d gone too far in the other direction. “How sure are you that you’ll follow or understand these instructions?” I asked. “I want to stick up for ‘Future Mrs. Control’ and try to be as supportive of her at that time. Do you think you could be directing a version of yourself that may not be as capable as you are now?”

“I’m being proactive,” she countered.

I waited until the next few meetings to re-broach her attempt to pre-program every imaginable variable, this time about the people who will be supporting her down the road. “Do you wonder if you are overfitting?” I asked. “You’re designing very precise instructions for your delegates for a future that might be less predictable.”

That’s the AATM critique in action. Systems matter—but brittle systems fail under stress.

“It seems like we are planning so far for everything except the one variable you can’t eliminate: people,” I continued. “The people who are actually going to be making decisions when this unfolds. We need to build in room for adaptability on your behalf.”

She pushed back. “I don’t want them to be adaptable. I want them to do as I wish. That’s why I’m giving them clear instructions.”

“Instructions aren’t the same as alignment,” I said. “You’re assuming they’ll interpret everything the way you do, under pressure, while watching you decline. Your daughter will be the one holding most of this, not your binder. Don’t you think she should be here for this binder conversation so she understands what matters to you?”

“She has the documents.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I don’t know how to talk to her about this. That’s why I want to write it all down for her.”

This is the opposite problem of Mr. Frozen. Not paralysis—overcompensation. Trying to eliminate uncertainty instead of working with it. And it requires a different intervention.

“Maybe you don’t need more instructions but better transmission?” I asked her.

She frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means your daughter needs to understand you—not just comply with you. Because later, she won’t be following a script. She’ll be making judgment calls based on what she thinks will be most important then, with or without your binder.”

And credit to her, she said something that I’ve used in dozens of conversations afterward.

“So she’s kind of like becoming my working functional mind when my memory goes out the window?”

“Yes, that’s one way to put it,” I said. “Memory isn’t just facts, it’s interpretation. Vibes. Tone. Emotional context. If she experiences you as rigid and controlling now, what do you think happens when she’s under stress later?”

She started laughing. “You got me. Guilty. I never thought about it that way.”

We shifted her approach to focus on:

Fewer documents, more conversations
Less micromanaging, more explaining why things matter
Space for her daughter to respond, not just receive

“You’re not building a machine,” I told her. “You’re building the support system for a person who can carry you forward.”

A fear of losing authorship

Mr. Frozen and Mrs. Control had the same disease and the same underlying reality when they started working with me: They faced having a future self who may not remember their present self. However, they had two different reactions:

Mr. Frozen:

Interpreted a loss of memory as a loss of meaning
Withdrew from planning because of that loss of meaning
Avoided responsibility because continuity felt broken

Mrs. Control:

Interpreted her loss of memory as a threat to control
Over-engineered every detail to maintain that control
Avoided uncertainty by trying to eliminate it

Both reacted to the same fear: a loss of authorship. Both also missed the same truth about dementia. You don’t keep the authorship of your story. You transfer it.

The professional’s job: going beyond financial services

In working with clients like Mr. Frozen and Mrs. Control, many of the techniques I learned come from disciplines outside of financial services: social work, law, therapy, clinical psychiatry. I still think I need them to do my own job, to advise on decisions that involve money but are almost always about something else.

If you, as a financial advisor, have a Mr. Frozen or Mrs. Control, here are my recommended approaches.

For a Mr. Frozen type grappling with a dementia diagnosis, how could you get them out of being immobile? Try taking them out of their own head and pointing them toward how they can still impact their future self:

“Your future self still experiences consequences.”
“Your people will carry your memory.”
“You still have leverage—use it.”

You move them from why bother to this still matters.

With a Mrs. Control persona, the job for any professional advisor might be something different: constraint. You limit their instinct to control and redirect it:

“You can’t script everything.”
“People aren’t systems you can fully specify.”
“Alignment beats instruction.”

You move them from I must control everything to I need to be understood.

Both types of clients eventually realize that their future will be shaped less by what they remember and more by what others remember about them. That’s the core AATM idea applied here that shapes how we work with these clients:

Clarifying values early
Embedding them into both systems and relationships
Reducing friction for the people who will carry the load
Accepting that influence replaces control

Ultimately, what we are doing is helping those who have received one of the most difficult diagnoses understand that they are shaping someone else’s experience of caring for them. Helping them plan for that experience to make it clearer, more comfortable, and more manageable is how to create a better ending for their story.