Estate planning is–or should be–about a family’s pecuniary interests, of course. But what about the things that money can’t buy? The best estate planners say you should deal with them. But these same planners, it seems to me, have a difficult time explaining what, exactly, these “other” assets are, how, exactly, these “other” assets can impact an estate, and what, exactly, you should do to maximize their benefit for future generations.

Gerald Le Van wrote an article for the American Bar Association’s Experience magazine (Summer 2006, p. 28) titled “A Family Council for the ‘Relational Estate.’” I think he begins to unpack the meaning of these “other,” intangible assets very well. He suggests that some of them are comprised of the family’s “relational estate.” Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome, visitor!

If you find my posts interesting, I invite you to sign up, at the top of the column to the right, to receive emails whenever I publish a new article.

Be assured I hate spam as much as anyone, I will hold your information in strictest confidence, and, of course, I always include a means for unsubscribing whenever you want.

Thanks for visiting!

Sincerely,

John Holzmann

We signed a new contract with a legacy planning company. (Hopefully third time’s a charm.) Our first legacy planner was an individual who works pretty much all by himself, with the aid of an analytics firm behind him. The second legacy planner was also an individual, but with a three-person office staff and . Our second We spent about an hour with two representatives from the company (M____, the planner himself, and J____, his understudy) plus B_____, our structures-and-estate-planning attorney.

A somewhat strange experience. M____ and J____ kept wanting to talk about their company and why we should view them as competent and “the right choice.” Which was fine. But I wasn’t worried about whether they are competent, and I wasn’t looking at alternatives or competitors. My main question had to do with whether and why we should hire anyone at all. So I asked them straight up: “Why should we hire you to guide us after our previous two semi-failed attempts at legacy planning? What unique value will you bring that B____, our attorney, and L____, our CPA, are not able to give us?” Read the rest of this entry »

This idea has been bubbling in my brain. I finally did something about it and wrote to a contact at Generous Giving.

Dear ______:

My wife and I attended the spring Generous Giving conference in Colorado Springs. When we heard the testimony of Al & Kathy Caperna the very first night, I couldn’t believe what a breath of fresh air that seemed: at last we had found people with a similar heart for the world, a similar sense of purpose and mission, and the kind of life experiences (owning a company, for example) that more-or-less matched our own. Of course we’re very different. But there are these key commonalities that mean so much to us and, we find, are so rare. Read the rest of this entry »

B____ [our estate planning attorney], L____ [our CPA], and I met this morning for our annual corporate meetings and strategy session. We discussed our legacy plans at this time. Both B____ and L____ were far more comfortable with the idea of us gifting our company to a DAF [a Donor Advised Fund] than changing it into a 501(c)(3) corporation.

They had a few key questions, one of which we were able to answer through resources they had at hand. Two key questions remain, however. (I’m sure a few more will come up. But these were the big ones that existed at the end of our meeting this morning.) Read the rest of this entry »

I’m supposed to meet with our attorney and CPA tomorrow morning for our annual corporate meetings. While we’re talking about all of our structures anyway, I figured we should talk about our next steps in terms of legacy planning. What should we do, for example, with the 501(c)(3) proposal or alternatives (like the Christian Foundation of the Triangle LLC Wrapper concept)?

Last week I contacted the attorney at National Christian Foundation who has been assigned as our primary contact and asked her if she might help me prepare for tomorrow’s meeting by giving me insights into the kind of idea she has (or NCF has) that might replace J____’s 501(c)(3) proposal.

I just received her reply. Sounds interesting! Read the rest of this entry »

Five questions, in order, will give you a broad-stroke-overview understanding of the legacy planning process. A few additional questions help clarify. Read the rest of this entry »

What is the right size inheritance to give to your children?

I was first confronted with this question many years ago by an article in which the author asked if it made any sense to fund a child who has decided to rebel against everything you have ever stood for. –Should you give them an equal inheritance to that which you give your other children who are more deeply committed to the causes and values that you espouse?

It wasn’t that I had such a child, nor that I even had any wealth to pass to our children. But it got me thinking.

More recently, especially as our estate’s value has grown, I’ve been confronted by other questions. For example: Should the kids inherit everything you can give them? Read the rest of this entry »

I was doing some research on the web and ran across “just one more” “complete estate plan” site:

This “complete” estate plan is definitely better than no plan at all. And if your are unwilling to take the time to sort through your deepest desires, purpose, vision, values, mission in life: having something like these documents ought to be better than having nothing. Read the rest of this entry »