Methodology
How we estimate net worth, score confidence, and decide when to refund a credit.
This page is the condensed read of the two canonical methodology documents Wealth Recon ships internally. The full math lives in docs/specs/net-worth-estimation-methodology.md and docs/specs/confidence-scoring-methodology.md; this page is the version an advisor reads before a meeting.
How the net worth band lands
Every dossier produces a single line on the At a Glance page in the form "low end to high end, confidence percent." For example: "Thirty-eight million dollars to fifty-two million dollars, confidence ninety-one percent."
The line is a band, never a point. A point estimate would imply precision the public record does not support and would invite the advisor to treat the number as a balance-sheet entry. The band is sized so that the true figure is, in our model, almost always inside it.
The band is for advisor planning context. It is not a tax filing, not a regulatory disclosure, not a fairness opinion, and not a substitute for the subject's own statement of net worth. Any conversation that turns on a precise figure (estate tax exposure, regulatory wealth thresholds, lender qualification) requires the subject's own documentation.
Eight signal categories
Wealth Recon groups public-source signal into eight categories. Every dossier runs each category to completion or records a verified gap. The taxonomy is the same across every subject so the band is reproducible and the audit log is comparable across the corpus.
| Category | What we read | What it captures |
|---|---|---|
| Real estate equity | County assessor records, deed transfers, building permits, mortgage filings | Owner-of-record holdings, transfer history, encumbrance presence |
| Public-company equity | Securities and Exchange Commission Forms 3, 4, 5, DEF 14A, Schedule 13G and 13F, 10-K and 10-Q officer disclosures | Insider holdings, executive equity grants, trading-plan flow, lockup terms |
| Private-company equity | Securities and Exchange Commission Form D, state Secretary of State filings, Hart-Scott-Rodino Act premerger notifications, Crunchbase, AngelList, county doing-business-as filings | Ownership stakes, board roles, fund commitments, recent formations |
| Liquidity events | Mergers-and-acquisitions press, Securities and Exchange Commission Form 8-K filings, Form 4 dispositions, initial public offering prospectuses, news | Realized cash, stock-rollover terms, lockup periods, escrow holdbacks |
| Inherited wealth signals | Probate filings, dynasty trust state registries, family foundation Form 990-PF filings, named endowments, obituaries | Trust structures, foundation flows, family-line wealth attribution |
| Retirement plan participation | Department of Labor Form 5500 | Plan assets and trustee roles for partnership and small-firm retirement plans |
| Lifestyle high-value assets | Federal Aviation Administration aircraft and pilot registries, United States Coast Guard vessel documentation, auction provenance, regatta results | Confirmed ownership of high-value movable assets |
| Counter-signals | Federal and state tax lien filings, court judgments, bankruptcy filings, Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement actions | Subtractive evidence; financial distress, encumbrance, litigation exposure |
Every signal in the taxonomy is verifiable through a public Uniform Resource Locator and feeds the Source Manifest at the back of the dossier. A category that returns nothing is recorded as a verified gap, not skipped silently.
Conservative band construction
The band is computed signal by signal. Each category produces a low-end and high-end contribution; the band sums the contributions and applies the counter-signal deduction. We apply specific haircuts to the high end to reflect the reality of the public-source picture:
- Restricted stock under a lockup discounts the low end based on how much time remains until the lockup releases.
- Real estate at county-assessor value lifts to a metro-specific market estimate, then deducts a verified or presumed mortgage encumbrance.
- Inherited-wealth signals, where the underlying trust structure is opaque, produce the widest contribution range and the largest single driver of low-confidence bands.
- Donor-advised fund and family foundation gifts are floor signals (a one-time large gift establishes a lower bound on disposable wealth, not an additive contribution).
- Lifestyle assets (aircraft, vessels, art) corroborate the wealth tier rather than adding to the additive math.
Edge cases that suppress the band
Three patterns produce no band at all:
- Bankruptcy filings within the past seven years suppress the band entirely. The dossier surfaces the filing and the At a Glance line reads "Range not estimable due to recent bankruptcy."
- Active federal tax liens above one million dollars suppress the band entirely. Same surface.
- Non-United States subjects are excluded from the band by default; the engine is United States-source-centric and a non-United States subject's wealth picture cannot be inferred from the corpus we cover.
A wrong-direction band is more dangerous than no band. The rule errs on the side of suppression.
How we score confidence
Every dossier ships with a single confidence number from zero to one hundred at the top of the At a Glance page. The number drives one decision: at or above eighty, the credit consumes and the dossier ships normally; below eighty, the credit refunds automatically, the dossier still ships, and a Low Signal banner names the gap.
The composite is a weighted average of four signals:
| Signal | Weight | What it captures |
|---|---|---|
| Coverage | 35 percent | What fraction of the fifteen dossier sections carry substantive verified content |
| Citation density | 25 percent | Average number of distinct verified sources per section |
| Identification certainty | 25 percent | How strong the disambiguation outcome was, plus contradiction checks across foundational facts |
| Net worth band tightness | 15 percent | How precise the band is relative to its midpoint |
A wrong-subject dossier scores at fifty or below regardless of every other signal because every claim verifies against a real source on a real person, just the wrong one. The weighting refuses to let that case slip past the eighty threshold.
A thin-footprint subject with a defensible but small public record can score above eighty when the few sections present carry strong verification. A dense-footprint subject with abundant low-quality citations can score below eighty when the deny-list filter strips press-release aggregators and search-engine-optimized profile-data sites from the citation count.
What advisors see
When the score lands at eighty or above, the dossier ships with the score visible at the top of the At a Glance page in plain text: "Confidence: 87." No banner, no apology, no special framing. The credit consumes.
When the score lands below eighty, the credit refunds automatically (no advisor action required, the refund posts within the hour). The score appears at the top of the At a Glance page exactly as above, just lower. A Low Signal banner appears immediately under the score:
Low Signal Dossier. This subject's public footprint produced a confidence score below our eighty threshold. We have shipped what we could verify and refunded the credit. The sections below show what the agent found and what it could not. The Source Manifest at the back lists every Uniform Resource Locator behind every claim. Use this dossier as a starting point, not a finished picture.
The Low Signal banner does not apologize, does not explain methodology in the body, and does not promise a better result on a rebuild. The link below the banner opens the full methodology document.
What this is not
This methodology is the math behind a research artifact. It is not financial advice. It is not a substitute for the subject's own documentation. It is not a regulatory filing. It is not a fairness opinion or a valuation report.
The advisor remains responsible for the conversation the dossier supports. We provide the research; you provide the relationship.
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End of methodology copy.