Oct. 4--When my father passed away in the early summer of 2008, he left my mother with a modest financial nest egg and very little guidance. My brother, sister and I got involved -- let's pause here for the laugh track -- to "help" my mother. Instead, we got an immediate School of Hard Knocks education about plummeting stock markets and dysfunctional brokerages.

Soon after we converged from around the country to assist Mom, the stock market began last fall's dramatic collapse. My parents had long relied on an Old School stock broker to manage and pick stocks. But now he was riding Wall Street's tempest, bouncing among constantly merging brokerage firms. Despite his urging my mother to follow him once again -- to UBS of all places -- she chose to stay at another big firm, one that would itself soon be taken over by another banking giant.

Her brokerage relationship since then has boiled down to a long and souring series of poor service experiences. The priority of the client -- my mother -- came last too often. What my mother was left with was a loss both of money, like most investors, and of trust in markets and brokers.

Apparently we are not alone. The weekly Barron's magazine, gospel of the investment community, carried a cover story on Sept. 28 with a simple four-word headline: Who Can You Trust?

"Between the rocky markets, the shaky banks and Bernie Madoff, the relationship between wealth managers and their clients didn't stand a chance," says the first sentence of the story by Suzanne McGee. "Rightly or not, investors first grew suspicious of their advisors and bankers, then contemptuous."

Hmmm. McGee must be tapping our family phone conversations.

The article asserts deep investor distrust is starting "to dramatically reshape the world of wealth management" dominated by brokerage houses, banks and other investment outfits.

Let's be clear. My mother is 85 and comfortable. But she is not a customer most brokerages scrambling for multi­millionaire business would waste their time on. She is focused on downsizing, conserving what assets remain and setting a budget that she hopes (who can know for sure these days) will last longer than she does.

She watches way too much CNBC. And she does not like being jerked around by distant money managers.

A recent survey by consulting firm Capgemini and Merrill Lynch found that more than one out of four high net-worth investors yanked money from their wealth managers in 2008.