Corporate Executives

Success Story
Larry Mathis and Diane Peterson

In 1997, Kanaly Trust began working with Larry Mathis and his wife, Diane Peterson. The couple had married two years earlier and both had very successful, established careers.

Larry recalls fondly, “As a Healthcare executive, I was too busy to manage my assets, I was too busy working. As I got ready to retire and experienced the issues of transitioning, I realized if I were smart, I’d get some expertise regarding how to manage my assets. In the midst of this new ‘thinking,’ I read a newspaper article that featured Steve Kanaly. I contacted him and based on our conversation, decided that Kanaly Trust was the best fit for managing our assets.” 

First steps for the Kanaly team in working with Larry and Diane included establishing investment management accounts for both and conducting initial planning.

“Larry was the original client,” says Diane. “When we married, I joined in with my assets. I was so excited by Kanaly’s approach – it was different, it was customized for me. I even compete with Larry on my portfolio performance, although my strategy is definitely different than his.”

As the years passed and Kanaly’s relationship with the couple matured, the team was asked to take on a more active role in assisting both Larry and Diane with their extended families’ needs. Larry had two grown children from a previous marriage and Diane was supporting the needs of her elderly parents and brother with special needs. 

“I have been very impressed with Kanaly’s ability to go beyond my needs and to support the needs of my family,” says Diane. “This is a comprehensiveness that I never expected when I first became a client. It is a very different approach than just financial management.”

When Venita Phillips joined the firm in 2004, she was introduced into the relationship with Diane and Larry. The team helped Diane plan next steps as her father faced nursing home care due to a stroke. With Venita’s strong background in working with special needs issues, she was an excellent addition to the team. Venita was able to assist the couple by working with their attorney in Pennsylvania on special needs assistance for Diane’s brother. After her father passed, the couple then asked the Kanaly team to help Diane’s mother consolidate and simplify her finances.

“Kanaly is ready for a challenge,” says Diane. “I felt that I have truly challenged them when working with my family, especially given the fact that my family members live out of state which engages different state laws and different financial rules. I was truly impressed by Kanaly’s commitment. They’d tell me not to worry, even if they had to travel to Pennsylvania to learn more about state requirements, they would. They rose to my challenges exceedingly well.”

When working with couples who have children from a previous marriage, Kanaly’s experiences reveal the need to address issues that may be a little different from a traditional nuclear family. Additionally, planning for incapacity issues for a loved one can provide additional considerations. The family’s estate planning needed to be attended to with those concerns in mind. 

Kanaly recommended that Diane and Larry review each of their respective estate plans as it had been a number of years since the documents were drafted. In addition to the amount of time that had passed, their situation had changed and their new plans would need to address those changes.

While the love they shared for each other was undeniable, both had family members they wanted and needed to provide for when they were no longer living. Kanaly set out to help them accomplish this goal.

It was suggested that since Diane’s family had a plan in place for her disabled brother, the team should focus first on her plan so that if something unexpected happened, her brother would be taken care of between her planning and that of her parents.