I thought this was a nice way to summarize a lot of the issues you should think about before talking with an attorney or other legacy planning professional about your legacy plan: Read the rest of this entry »

Once you’ve put your initial estate plan/legacy plan together, you should plan to review it every three years. Indeed, you should condition yourself to think of estate planning as a continuous process. Don’t believe that?

Check out these reasons for review suggested by the development/stewardship officers at Frontiers USA. Read the rest of this entry »

How do you change the way you think and feel and behave?

I’m not talking about the “oops!” kind of mind alteration–y’know, the revelatory, slap-your-forehead, “Oh! Of course! How could I have been so stupid!?!” mental shift.

I’m talking about knowing what you need to do–or, even, having a sneaking suspicion that you need to change your way of thinking, but not being able to turn on the light bulb in your brain–i.e., a mind-shift that requires real work. How do you make purposeful, premeditated alterations in your habits of mind, how you view the world, how you think, how you behave?

Legacy planning and estate planning, at its very root, I think, requires this kind of mental change. I mean, if you’re going to do a really good job at writing a plan, it takes more than a couple of hours of casual thinking to work out what you desire to achieve with your wealth; if you have young children: where you want them to go, who you want to take care of them, how you want them to be cared for, etc.; how you want to be cared for if, God forbid, you find yourself incapacitated and requiring long-term care or–forget you finding yourself incapacitated– . . . Suppose your relatives find you incapacitated and incapable of speech or communication: How shall they care for you?

These kinds of questions require some deep and serious thought. And even the most patient attorneys or other professionals–even if you could afford their fees–cannot draw your finessed thoughts out of you in a 2- or even 8-hour interview. And, I dare say, even a week-long retreat dedicated to these matters won’t quite do whatever-it-is you require to come to peace about your true thoughts and beliefs in these matters.

Hey. I’ve been working on my legacy plan–not full-time, but dedicating a few hours a week, on average–for close to three years, now. And, I am embarrassed to admit, my wife and I still haven’t gotten down to business on one of the most important pieces of the plan: the documentation (that would be so helpful to our executors) of where all our key papers are, the list of all our professional advisors, where our safe deposit boxes are and how to gain access, where all of our accounts are–and user names and passwords to gain access, etc., etc. Read the rest of this entry »

This isn’t something I had thought about before, but I just saw an article titled Tools for Managing Your Online Life After Death.

What happens to your Hotmail or Gmail account when you die? What about your online photo collections on Picasa or Flickr?

Answer: It depends. And some of it depends on you!

To give you an idea:

• Hotmail let’s relatives order a CD of all messages in the deceased users account on submission of a death certificate and proof of power of attorney.
   
• Gmail Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve posted the story of a major bequest that came to the brink of becoming worthless–or worse than worthless–to the recipients.

I imagine it’s a cautionary tale that many of us should pay attention to.

Check it out on the Strategic Inheritance forums . . . and join the conversation!

I described the technical differences between donor-advised funds (DAFs) and private foundations back in June of 2007. Frankly, at the time, I saw no compelling reason seriously to consider creating a DAF.

Following the FoundationWise^SM conference, however, I’m seeing more reasons than I did back then to consider this alternative. Read the rest of this entry »

I had the privilege of attending the first FoundationWise^SM conference at Focus on the Family the week before last.

FoundationWise^SM is meant to help people who “own” and operate private foundations to do a better job.

As I looked at the various workshops available for participants, it seemed to me that there were to primary tracks: one having to do with succession planning–passing on the vision and purpose to the next generation, and one having to do, more, with success on the “business” end of things–keeping good corporate records, ensuring your within the bounds of the law, investing successfully, and so forth. I followed the “succession planning” track.

One of the key questions I hoped to answer had to do with passing responsibility to the next generation: How can I know that they will carry on pursuing a vision that I would want them to pursue? Put another way: if I’m leaving them significant funds for charitable purposes, how can I ensure that they won’t take those funds and potentially turn them to uses possibly diametrically opposed to those for which I would have given them?

I mean, it is so common for nonprofits to wind up doing things very differently than their founders intended!

Intermixed in this larger question: How do we encourage our children in the ways of generosity?I thought some of the answers were very insightful. Here are some of the things that people suggested (not necessarily in order): Read the rest of this entry »

I will confess: I’ve been dragging my feet. Not sure why. But I had to overcome the hurdle.

I have finally “turned on” the Strategic Inheritance Legacy Lounge forum and invite you to join what I hope will soon be a freewheeling and inspirational discussion of all things related to passing on a heritage from one generation to another.

Join us, won’t you?

Thanks!