A financial advisor on a professional client's team noticed the client was being charged agent commissions on income streams no active agent had negotiated, a representation agreement expired eighteen months prior, and no fee acknowledgment on record. We stopped the commissions and closed the file cleanly.
None of those streams were tied to any deal an active agent had negotiated. The representation agreement had expired eighteen months prior with no renewal signed. The prior agent's firm was invoicing the payors directly under a standing collection instruction the client had never revoked.
The client did not want a fight. The advisor did not want to lose the client through a messy conflict.
We ran the representation agreement history against the payor records and the payment schedule to identify the exact date each commission stream should have terminated. We drafted a written notice to the prior agent's firm asserting the expiration, demanding refund of commissions collected post-expiration, and revoking the standing collection instruction across every payor.
We coordinated with each payor to reroute payments to the client's LLC directly, closed the file with the prior firm through a defined release, and drafted a template representation-agreement framework the client can use with any future agent.
We handed the client back to the financial advisor with the streams cleaned up and a repayment schedule from the prior firm on the post-expiration commissions.
"I would not have caught it without her eye. She would not have fixed it without ours."
— Professional Client (Referred)
Payors keep sending money the way they have always sent it until someone tells them, in writing, to stop. An agent representation agreement can lapse cleanly while the collection mechanics that grew up around it, direct invoicing, standing instructions, automatic deductions, keep running on their own momentum for months or years afterward.
A financial advisor doing routine reconciliation work is often the first person positioned to notice the discrepancy, because they are the one actually tracking where the money goes. Catching it is only half the job. Revoking the instruction across every payor and securing repayment is what actually stops the bleeding.
We handle expired-representation and agent commission disputes for financial-advisor-referred clients, and we work to resolve them without escalating into a fight the client did not ask for.
Most engagements are flat fee, quoted before the work begins — and most matters resolve without litigation. Start with a free consultation.