Financial advisors need a fast, accurate way to visualize client households, extended families, and external connections. This helps them engage in conversation, build relationships, and find referral and upsell opportunities. Today, these relationships are captured inconsistently across CRM records, documents, and interactions, making it difficult to see who influences decisions, where assets reside, and how life events impact portfolios. A dedicated Family Tree addresses this by centralizing relationship mapping and making it actionable.
The Family Tree tab lets you create a family tree for a household and view all associated family trees when viewing a contact. You can also view the external connections of a household or contact.
How It Works
Create a family tree in a household
Each household can include up to two spouses and any number of children. Add members by selecting contacts within the household or searching for contacts outside it.
To create a family tree, select a household and go to the Family Tree tab. Click the Add Spouse button. A pop-up will show all contacts from the household. Select a contact to add them to the family tree. We recommend identifying a main contact and adding them as the first spouse. Then add the second spouse and the children.
Note:
- Make sure the selected household has contacts.
- Family trees must be created in a household. In a contact, you can view associated family trees but cannot edit them.
After adding the first spouse, add the second spouse to the tree.
Select a contact in the household as the second spouse. Both spouses are now added. You can now add children by selecting other contacts in the household.
All contacts in a household are added to the tree. If the family has adult children who have moved out and have their own households, you can add them to the family tree.
In the pop-up for adding a child, click Add a contact from outside the household to open the search dialog. Find a contact and add them to the tree.
After adding a child from outside the household, you can add their spouse and children from the child's household.
If you've already set up a family tree for a child's household, when you add that child to the parent's family tree, the child's family tree will be added automatically. For example, if Robert and Jennifer's household has a family tree created, when Robert is added to his parents' family tree, all members in Robert's household will be displayed.
Note:
- If a child is still within the parent's household, you cannot add the child's spouse to the parent's family tree. First, create a household for the child and move them to their own household. Then you can add the child and their spouse to the parent's family tree.
- Adding a member to a family tree doesn't add the contact to a household.
- Removing a child deletes their entire branch. For example, removing Robert removes all members in Robert's household from the parent's family tree. Removing a child in a sub-branch updates that household's family tree - removing David Cameron will also remove him from the Robert and Jennifer household family tree.
- Clicking a name on each card opens a pop-up showing the contact's details.
- The birthdate display on each card is based on the Maximizer built-in user-defined field Birthdate (in WM_KYC etc. / Personal folder). Do not delete this field in your database. If you create your own birthdate field, it cannot be used in the family tree.
- Family trees can be created for households. They are not supported for companies.
View the associated family trees of a contact
A contact may belong to multiple families. For example, they have their own household, appear in their parents' family tree, and are part of their spouse's parents' family tree. When you select a contact, you can view all associated family trees.
When a contact is selected, all associated family trees will be displayed. Click each tab to view the individual tree.
You can view a contact's parents' family tree or their spouse's parents' family tree. To do this, the contact must first be added to the respective parent's family tree. In the example below, Lou needs to be added to his parents' family tree (Peter and Mary).Note
You can view associated family trees for a selected contact, but you cannot edit members in those trees. Family tree editing is only available within a household.
View external connections
Financial advisors often need to see connections beyond family members to find referral or upselling opportunities.
To view external connections for a household, turn on Show household connections. This displays connections such as lawyers, accountants, and family doctors. You can also view external connections for individual contacts such as their sports team members or colleagues.
Note
- External connections must be set up in the Related Entries tab.
Turn on Show household connections to display the external connections of a household such as the realtor, accountants, or friends.
When a contact is selected, turn on Show external connections to view the contact's other connections, such as sports team members, co-workers, or friends.
Family Tree replaces the Household view. As such the Household view tab will no longer be available.