A senior advisor in estate planning, you counsel high-net-worth individuals and families on strategies for transferring wealth — wills, trusts, gifting plans, business-succession structures, and the tax and family dynamics that shape each. Often attorney or CPA-credentialed.
A typical week often involves client meetings, document drafting, and coordination with attorneys, accountants, and trustees — sitting with a family on a generation-skipping trust, reviewing draft wills and revocable trust documents, working through closely-held-business succession plans, coordinating with outside counsel on complex structures. You're often the senior planner when families face the most personal and consequential financial decisions. Plans implemented and client satisfaction are the indirect measures.
The harder part is often the family dynamics that surface in estate planning — wealth transfer involves siblings, second marriages, special-needs children, and intergenerational tensions, and the senior planner navigates all of it. Variance across employers is wide: at private banks and trust companies you have institutional infrastructure; at law firms or independent advisory practices you build personal client relationships.
People who tend to thrive here have legal or accounting depth, strong personal judgment, and the patience for emotionally consequential client work. JD, CPA, CFP, and CTFA credentials anchor seniority. The trade-off is the long-arc nature of estate work — plans implemented today play out over decades.
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Roles with similar work and overlapping career paths
View all Business Operations roles →A senior advisor in estate planning, you counsel high-net-worth individuals and families on strategies for transferring wealth — wills, trusts, gifting plans, business-succession structures, and the tax and family dynamics that shape each. Often attorney or CPA-credentialed.
Median pay for a Senior Estate Planner is about $81K nationally, with the field ranging roughly from $36K to $208K depending on experience, employer, and metro (BLS).
Core skills for this role include Active Listening, Reading Comprehension, Speaking, Reading Comprehension, and Active Listening.
Most people in this role hold a bachelor's degree.
Employment in this field is projected to grow about 6.65% through 2034, with roughly 739,960 people working in it today (BLS).
Closely related roles include Estate Planner, Account Manager, and Junior Group Insurance Special Agent.
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