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 an apparently rather long and illustrious history of helping numerous wealthy families with their estate plans. . . . But then we ran into some of the issues I’ve been blogging about over the last couple or three months.

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 »

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So J____, our legacy planner, and I spoke with C____, an attorney with a high-end attorneys’ firm here in Denver. C____ specializes in tax planning for estate disposition, intergenerational wealth transfers (including business succession), construction of specialized trusts, and law related to non-profit and religious institutions.

Before we spoke, I had forwarded her some of the results of my research. She said the cases I was referring to were rather old. “A lot of water has flowed over the dam in the intervening years,” she said. “We need to do research to find out what cases have followed that may make those cases that you’ve found unimportant.”

“So what’s the probability, you think, for us to succeed?” I asked. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know what to think. Our legacy planner, J____, seems pretty excited about whatever-it-is he’s putting together for us. He’s supposed to be one of the nation’s — and, therefore, the world’s — leading legacy planners. So I sure hope he’s not hyping us!

Anyway. He just wrote me:

We have been working feverishly on your Master Stewardship Plan. We have another conference call with L____ and B____ tomorrow morning to review the plan design that we have been developing. I do not expect there will be much in the way of changes from either of them on the draft plan we have been building. We have been keeping them in the loop for the entire process. L____ [our CPA] has be extraordinarily helpful to us. We have not really had S_____ [our investment advisor] involved since most of what we are doing at this point is legal and accounting type planning. I will make sure he has an opportunity to review the proposed Master Stewardship Plan before we present it to you. We can likely send him the draft for his review next week. I cannot imagine he will have any problems with what we are designing. . . .

I will say that I fully expect that you and Sarita are going to be awestruck when you see the plan we are assembling for you. You can hold me to that. I have designed a lot of plans over my career and seen a lot more as well and your plan I think will be one of the most profoundly powerful plans we have ever designed.

Give us just a few more weeks to finish our design work and get the Master Stewardship Plan book and presentation finished and we will be ready to present it to you. I am personally about as excited with your plan as I have been with any plan I have ever designed.

Is that an adequate build up for what is coming?

Stay tuned. We are bearing down on the finish line.

Okay!