Today was the big day. I’ve been committed to acquiring a legacy plan, now, for almost a year and a half. Of course, I don’t merely want a plan; I want to implement a plan. But simply to get a proposal in hand so Sarita and I can look at it and (hopefully) say, “Yay, verily, this is what we want to do . . . ” –It’s been just shy of a year and a half.

So our legacy planner and his assistant came to our office and we spent about 3 1/2 hours going through their proposed plan. And it includes:

• The stewardship assumptions upon which the plan is based–including a carefully calculated “total taxable estate net worth” (including a summary “schedule of assets”); current lifetime gift transfer credit used and available; Generation Skipping Tax exemption used and available; our “Family Wealth Letter of Intent” (by way of reference–we did not re-read it!); and a summary of our “Stewardship Goals and Objectives.”
• A comparison of the estate plan we currently have vs. the proposed plan–including comparisons of
  • anticipated annual income;
  • funds to be distributed over our lives and at death to our children;
  • funds to be given taxing authorities over the course of our lives and at death by way of income tax, capital gains taxes, estate taxes, and so forth; and
  • funds to be disbursed to our chosen charitable causes–again, during our lives and at death.
• An analysis of our current plan–including a flow chart (plus narrative explanation) that shows exactly who gets what from what entities and a summary statement of how effectively our current plan achieves our stated goals and objectives;
• A direct presentation of the proposed legacy plan, including flow charts, narratives, technical memoranda to professional advisors (attorneys, CPAs, etc.), and detailed analyses of how well the new plan achieves our stated goals and objectives;
• Supporting cash flows and schedules showing projected taxable income, federal and state taxes, spendable income, annual (personal) charitable gifts [outside of/in addition to gifts specifically earmarked within the plan], and such things as Depreciation, Schedule B and Schedule E income, and so forth; and, finally,
• A detailed Plan for Implementation, including recommendations concerning the specific skill-sets the professionals who draft our documents should have, which documents and entities need to be created, modified and/or terminated, and, last but not least, which assets need to be repositioned–and how.

I’ll confess: I’m impressed with the document’s apparent thoroughness.

But now it’s time for us to review what our planning professional has suggested, seek additional, outside counsel, pray about it . . . and see where we go!

I hope (soon!) forward!

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 9:52 pm and is filed under estate planning, featured, legacy planning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.