Financial planners who work with LGBTQ clients are helping them prepare for a potential rollback of civil rights under President-elect Donald Trump’s second administration.

Expressing empathy for the clients’ fears about future Supreme Court decisions, congressional bills or executive actions and state-level laws has emerged as a key aspect of guiding households through careful considerations and avoiding rash choices — along with providing technical guidance on the ramifications to estate planning and residential moves, financial advisors told Financial Planning. Just as with clients of any background or political ideology, planners are trying to assist clients in dealing with events out of their control that are affecting their families’ financial future.

“Being a great listener” and understanding that “people are going to have unease about investments specifically” when they believe that their rights are under attack can go a long way, said Lindsey Young, founder of Baltimore-based registered investment advisory firm Quiet Wealth. Shortly after Trump’s victory in this month’s elections, she warned in a LinkedIn post that many clients’ marriages may no longer be secure in some states and that it was important for LGBTQ couples to “have estate plans and healthcare directives in place that incorporate the possibility that their marriages are no longer recognized.” But that should come after giving the clients the space to share their valid concerns, she said in an interview.

“It’s just recognizing that it could be a hard time,” Young said. “It’s just saying, ‘I’m here to help you.’ Saying that is really important.”

READ MORE: LGBTQ estates — when planning is a civil right

Marriage rights are rightfully getting “a lot of attention when it comes to the political battle for human rights, and rightfully so,” according to Leighann Miko, founder of Los Angeles- and Portland, Oregon-based RIA firm Equalis Financial. However, transgender clients and their loved ones are also wondering about “the medical care they need” and a range of issues including “access to hormones, surgery, legal changes to a birth certificate or gender markers on a driver’s license,” she said in an email. 

“Often as planners, we default to our technical skills to plan the risk away,” Miko said. “While helpful and usually the reason our clients seek us out, it’s equally important to provide a safe space for our clients to express their fears and concerns, especially as it relates to their financial lives. As a marginalized community that has had to fight tooth and nail for basic human rights, LGBTQ clients are exhausted. Be patient, be willing to see things through a different lens, and listen with empathy.”

Even before the election, LGBTQ advocates had been tracking a surge in state bills and laws involving IDs, drag shows, health care and schools. 

For 2.7 million LGBTQ people over the age of 50, the rankings for the best states to retire in vary greatly from a list that doesn’t take their civil liberties into account, according to a report last month by the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank. MAP’s top 10 of Oregon, Connecticut, Maine, Vermont, California, Hawaii, Delaware, Colorado, Rhode Island and New Jersey contrasted with a Bankrate list that rated Delaware, West Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, Missouri, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Florida, Iowa and Wyoming at the top. Delaware was the only state that made both top 10 lists.

“Including even a minimal consideration of a state’s treatment of LGBTQ people would result in a different ranking of states altogether,” MAP wrote in the report. “MAP’s research team decided to compare Bankrate’s analysis to our publicly available data on state policy to illustrate how state rankings can change dramatically when you incorporate laws and policies that shape the lives and experiences of LGBTQ people. Our findings show strikingly different results and highlight a very different set of considerations for LGBTQ adults deciding where to spend their golden years.”

READ MORE: LGBTQ retirees face specific challenges. Here’s how advisors can help

As inviting as a new state may seem when considering policies, clients will need to weigh factors such as whether their residence may affect their pension and a possible higher cost of living if they depart from a southern state to a coastal state like California or New York, Young noted. Since fear can lead to common behavioral biases or mistakes, planners must “show them the facts in terms of the implications of a potential move” and “be realistic with them” as the clients think through their long-term goals, she said.

“The big thing is to say, ‘Let’s step back and run the numbers.’ I think there’s a temptation among many people to say, ‘I’m going to move, I’m going to get out and we’ll figure it out when we get there,'” Young said. “If they were to move, it actually makes them feel much more confident with that move, as opposed to just panicking.”

In terms of the possible challenges to same-sex marriage, advisors and their clients could seek second-parent adoptions, update the beneficiaries listed in a will or a trust or purchase life insurance to cover estate taxes if one of the spouses dies, Miko noted. Those possible steps come on top of other necessary ones, if there is a Supreme Court decision overturning same-sex marriage rights or if individual states pass their own restrictions, she said.

“Many of the pre-2015 safeguards will have to be implemented once again, which still don’t quite level the playing field compared to legally recognized marriage rights,” Miko said. “For example, a non-married partner does not automatically inherit assets upon the death of a partner, and, in community property states, the surviving partner would not receive the tax benefit of a full step-up in cost basis on the inherited asset, such as a home.”

READ MORE: Are Christian donor advised-funds pushing anti-LGBTQ politics?

She and Young pointed out how marriage affects the policy of unlimited gifts between spouses without estate taxes and the requirement for clients to get current and valid power of attorney and advanced health care directive documents on file. 

“The good thing is that there are many LGBTQ estate attorneys who have been doing this for decades,” Young said. “That provides the best protection against potential changes in the law.”

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners is marking International Fraud Awareness Week this week, with more than 1,400 organizations across the world educating their communities about the threat of fraud and scams and how to stay safe.

The ACFE launched the weeklong event in 2000. It began as National Fraud Awareness Week and became international seven years later. Next year will mark the 25th anniversary.

Last week, the ACFE hosted the ACFE Government Anti-Fraud Summit in Washington, D.C., bringing together experts from inside and outside government to discuss ways to combat fraud.

“In terms of online activity, we always tell people when you put information out into the world, you need to be aware of the fact that you’re leaving digital breadcrumbs that people are going to be able to pull together if, in fact, you really are a worthy target,” said Morgan Adamski, executive director of United States Cyber Command during a keynote session. “Something to be very cognizant of, and limiting their friend zone in terms of who has access to that information.”

She warned of activity by a Chinese government-backed group of hackers. “They are prepositioning in U.S. critical infrastructure so that they can potentially disrupt, degrade and deny those services at a time that they’re choosing to create societal panic,” said Adamski. 

The hackers have been exploiting vulnerabilities in people’s home routers as a way to access critical infrastructure and advised attendees to update the software in their routers.

“The key takeaway is that a lot of the cybersecurity we’re talking about is a little basic, but when we have technology in all aspects of our lives, it can be a little daunting to think about security and the role that we play in that, and how we have to kind of really stay attuned to it,” said Adamski. “Just remember malicious cyber actors are always looking for targets of opportunity. They are hunter gatherers. One piece of revealed information very often leads to a breadcrumb trail of other information, and when we put that together, that can result in compromise.”

The federal government often needs to partner with the private sector, noted Joseph Ford, owner and principal of Newman and Ford Associates. He was formerly executive vice president and chief security officer at Bank of the West and spent 30 years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including as the FBI’s CFO and COO.

“Having sat on both sides, with government and private sector financial services, information sharing and building these collaborative relationships really becomes very, very important, but you have to have something to share,” said Ford. “Being able to establish a culture in the private sector that allows you to have that outreach, having working groups of government entities. Think of yourselves as each having a role to play,, whether you’re in the audit function, the law enforcement function or the intelligence function. You all have a role to play in collaborating with the private sector. Having those relationships is important, but how do you translate those relationships into something actionable? I think we all struggle with that.”

He’s seen working groups create information-sharing processes through joint training efforts and joint exercises such as tabletop exercises to help them prepare for a crisis like a cybersecurity or fraud event. 

“I actually do a lot of work with cyber tabletop exercises,” said Ford. “Inevitably, in every exercise, I add a fraud element because most bad guys that are committing cyber attacks, whether it’s a cyberattack on a government agency’s payment system, or a cyberattack to get information, there is usually a fraud element involved.”

Billionaire Ken Griffin cast doubt on two of President-elect Donald Trump’s most loudly heralded economic policy plans: tax cuts and tariff hikes.

Republicans should be mindful of the effect of tax cuts on the growing national debt and the impact of tariffs on the long-term competitiveness of American businesses, Griffin said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Sonali Basak at the Economic Club of New York.

“The big problem is we’ve got to get productivity growing,” Griffin said.

Saul Martinez/Bloomberg

The Citadel founder on Thursday suggested the opposite course might be needed: “There’s a real question about where do we need to raise taxes to start to put our house in order.”

He also said Republicans, who will control the White House and both chambers of Congress in January, will need to look at cutting spending as well. He acknowledged that doing so will be difficult, saying that “these are really unpopular decisions for politicians to make.”

Trump has pledged to extend his 2017 tax cuts and eliminate other levies on tips for service workers and Social Security benefits. He’s also pledged to impose a 10% or 20% tariff on all imported goods — with even higher duties on Chinese products — and argues that they will increase revenues while bringing manufacturing operations back to the US.

“I am gravely concerned that that rise of tariffs puts us on a slippery slope towards crony capitalism,” Griffin said. Tariffs give a short-term benefit for domestic companies that produce goods, but in the long term, they harm productivity, he added.

“Those same companies that enjoy that momentary sugar rush of having their competitors removed from the battlefield soon become complacent,” Griffin said.

Griffin said tariffs will ultimately hurt the U.S. economy, which needs to rapidly increase productivity if it wants to meet all its obligations, including paying benefits promised to retiring Americans through programs like Social Security and Medicare.