Not all medical leaves work out successfully. Mac Dickson, 58, a registered financial planner with Dickson’s Complete Tax Service in Orillia, Ont., was forced to put his financial planning business on hold in 2000 when his kidney disease became too onerous.

Without a contingency plan in place, he put his business in trust, splitting his client roster between two local advisors, who would look after the clients while sharing the revenue with Dickson.

The understanding was that Dickson would take over again when he was healthy. “I thought it seemed like the best way,” he says. “I had hoped to come back.”

Unfortunately, that never happened. In 2003, when Dickson was recovering from a kidney transplant, he received an e-mail from one of the advisors saying she could no longer take care of the clients on his behalf under the agreement. Troubled by his illness and having been out of the business for almost three years, he agreed to give up the clients to those advisors.

Today, he regrets the way he handled the situation. With better planning and better communication with his clients, Dickson might have been in a position to sell his book when he realized he was not going to return to work. He ended up losing his financial planning business.

Now semi-retired, Dickson works strictly as an accountant — during tax season — working around his regular dialysis schedule.

“If you have another advisor pitching in for two years,” he says, “you’ve probably lost the client and the other advisor is in the driver’s seat.”

— WENDY CUTHBERT