For more than five decades, Dallas customers relied on Inwood Motors owner Clay Hansard to repair their vehicles with unquestioned integrity. He’d first bought into the venerable garage on Newmore Avenue in the early 1970s with his father, who’d run it for years with the same ethical standards.
In 2022, Hansard made the decision to retire. But before he did he arranged for his customers to be taken care of by Scott Richardson of Eagle Transmission & Automotive, another Dallas mechanic with the same values. Today, the old Inwood Motors phone number rings straight through to Richardson.
“I had the best clientele in Dallas,” says Hansard, 76. “It was hard to leave my customers with nowhere to go, and that’s why I set up the deal with Scott.”
Inwood Motors customers were lucky. As more and more trusted specialists like Hansard retire or, in some cases, pass away, their longtime patrons and clients can be left in a tough spot. The search for a replacement can be stressful, especially for older adults tasked with selecting a new lawyer, therapist, doctor, CPA, veterinarian or hair stylist after years of working with a single reliable provider.
Fortunately, there are ways to navigate such situations that will make the transition easier — whether the provider’s exit is planned or not. Consider attorneys, for example, who are encouraged by the State Bar of Texas to designate a “custodian-attorney” in advance. This ensures that, if your lawyer’s practice ceases suddenly for whatever reason, the custodian-attorney can take certain steps — like accessing your files in order to return them to you or transfer them to your new counsel.
Lawyers also are strongly urged to make formal succession plans, ideally years in advance of their target retirement date. They might hire a younger attorney and, with your permission, gradually turn some of your business over to them. Or they may wind up joining or merging with another firm.
In these cases, “I think the client should ask to meet this person or say, ‘Tell me about them; I’d like to know what their expertise is, whether or not they can handle my file’ — just be a good consumer,” says Gregory W. Sampson, senior counsel at Gray Reed in Dallas and chair of the state bar’s Law Practice Management Committee, which focuses on succession planning. And if a client isn’t comfortable with the replacement attorney? “Then they should ask that lawyer if he could refer them to somebody else, or ask friends if they have a lawyer they could refer them to,” Sampson says. “Those are your two best avenues.”
Reevaluating your needs
Like attorneys, it’s recommended that therapists appoint a “custodian of records,” according to Wendy Weltman Palmer, a Dallas-based licensed clinical social worker. Faced with both sudden and planned retirements, she says, patients can experience a “grief reaction” that includes phases of shock, denial, sadness, anger and, eventually, acceptance.
The handoff to a new therapist can be an opportunity for a patient to reevaluate their needs, Palmer notes. “Maybe [you] don’t need to be in therapy anymore. … Or, maybe this is time to try a new kind of therapy — a different model or technique or even a different modality, like group therapy. Hopefully, that kind of discussion would take place within the context of the therapeutic relationship as part of the termination process.”
Dr. Hugh McClung, 72, a recently retired internist with UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, says he gave his patients at least six months’ notice, as well as recommendations on who they would best match with. He also told people, “Talk with your friends, see who they go to, see who they like. Go in and talk to the proposed doctor and see what you think,” he notes. “Because it’s an interview-type process. It’s good to have some kind of rapport.”
‘Deeper questions about aging’
The transition process is equally important when it comes to those who tend to your money, like a financial advisor or a certified public accountant. According to Aaron Borden, with accounting and consulting firm Grant Thornton in Dallas, you’ll need copies of all your tax records when switching to a new CPA.
Just like Palmer noted, Borden says clients can use financial expert transitions to revisit their sometimes-changing requirements. “‘Have I outgrown this preparer?’ Or, on the flip side, ‘As my complexity declines, I might not need the services of this caliber of firm.’ I see it going both ways.”
Palmer views such transitions in the context of modern aging itself. “I’m still working. I’m a baby boomer. But I’ve seen people retire that are younger than me and thought, ‘That’s so interesting,’” Palmer says. “It can be shocking and upsetting and create a lot of anxiety, because suddenly someone you’ve known and depended on for advice for so many years is taking themselves out of the picture.
“I think it gets into deeper questions about aging — and about our sense of ourselves as vital people and not wanting to be sidelined,” she adds. “It’s also just the way of life. Baby boomers somehow think [facing such transitions] is a new thing. But people have been doing it for years.