What Is a Fiduciary Financial Advisor?
A fiduciary is someone legally required to act in your best interest, ahead of their own. In financial planning, that means the person advising you cannot recommend a product because it pays them more, cannot steer you toward their firm's in-house funds for the firm's benefit, and has to disclose conflicts of interest rather than bury them.
That sounds like table stakes. It is not. A large share of the people who call themselves financial advisors are not held to that standard at all times, and the difference shows up in your account balance over decades.
Fiduciary duty versus the suitability standard
Registered investment advisers (RIAs) and their representatives owe a fiduciary duty under the Investment Advisers Act. Broker-dealers and registered representatives are held to Regulation Best Interest, which is stronger than the old suitability rule but still permits a recommendation that pays the representative more than an equivalent alternative would, so long as it is defensible for you.
The practical translation: under a suitability-style standard, an advisor can put you in a perfectly acceptable product that happens to be the most profitable acceptable product. Under fiduciary duty, that reasoning is not available.
The dual-registration trap
Many advisors are dually registered — a fiduciary when giving advice, a salesperson when placing a trade or selling an insurance contract. The hat changes mid-conversation and the client rarely notices. This is legal, common, and the single most useful thing to ask about before you hire anyone.
The phrase that matters is "fiduciary at all times." Not "we act in a fiduciary capacity when providing advisory services." All times.
Five questions that settle it
1. Are you a fiduciary at all times, in writing? Ask for it in writing. A fee-only fiduciary will hand it over without hesitation.
2. How exactly are you paid — every source? The answer should be a single sentence. If it takes three minutes and includes the word "depends," there are commissions somewhere.
3. Do you or your firm receive any commission, revenue sharing, or third-party compensation? Includes insurance, annuities, and fund platform payments.
4. Can I see your Form ADV Part 2 and your Form CRS? Both are public. Part 2 discloses conflicts, disciplinary history, and the actual fee schedule.
5. Who holds my money? The answer should be an independent, third-party custodian — never the advisor's own firm.
Why this matters more for LGBTQ+ households
Conflicted advice tends to concentrate in exactly the places queer households have the most exposure: permanent life insurance sold as an estate solution to unmarried partners, annuities pitched to people worried about outliving a partner, and rushed beneficiary paperwork that quietly overrides a will. A commissioned product can be the right answer. It is just rarely the first answer, and a fiduciary has no incentive to make it one.
There is also a plainer reason. If your advisor is compensated only by you, they have no reason to avoid an uncomfortable topic — an unmarried partnership, a chosen-family beneficiary, a gender marker change on account records, a move to a state with different protections. Those conversations do not generate product sales. They generate better plans.
How Aequitas works
Aequitas is a fee-only, fiduciary registered investment adviser. We are paid by clients and no one else — no commissions, no product sales, no revenue sharing, no quotas. Assets are held at an independent custodian. Planning is virtual-first, which means we work with LGBTQ+ households across the United States without office overhead priced into the fee.
If you want the broader picture of how this fits together, start with our overview of LGBTQ+ financial planning.