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 »

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Well, J____ agreed to “let us go” and refund a portion of the funds we had prepaid for services not yet rendered. At the same time, he required us to sign a letter of termination that included the following clauses:

1. You agree to notify all people who were the recipients of your email to me dated 4/15/2008 that because of contents of that email, we have mutually agreed to terminate our working relationship.

   [--Yep. All my fault.]

Read the rest of this entry »

Ah! It’s been a mess.

I asked J____ for forgiveness to the greatest degree I felt I could, in good conscience.

He accepted my apology and proffered forgiveness.

I made no mention of the conclusion of our relationship. He had stated firmly on Monday that “this was it.”

He made no mention of continuing our relationship, either.

So a couple of hours after I asked forgiveness and he granted it, I wrote him about a refund.

“Interesting follow up email to your email asking for forgiveness,” he replied. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been trying to think through our legacy planner, J____’s, comment about how he is Peyton Manning and I am constantly second-guessing him, “running onto the field” and attempting to play quarterback.

As I’ve thought about it, I realize J____ has made a number of suggestions or recommendations to us over the half year or so we have been working together. And, after due consideration, I have (and I should say, Sarita and I have–we have) rejected several of them. Read the rest of this entry »

It sounds as if the threat–the thought–of termination is becoming a reality. J____, our legacy planner, just wrote me a letter:

John,

This email I just received from C____ [the attorney to whom he introduced us] only further confirms my decision to discontinue working with your family. Exactly when was I going to hear about this new development? Read the rest of this entry »

I’m in shock. Stunned.

J____, our legacy planner, called this morning. And, boy! He let me have it. Right between the eyes. And he wasn’t about to back off an inch from his perspective or position: He is right. Sarita and I are wrong. We have (I have) no business questioning him. Certainly not in front of others (the way I did in my “Building or Destroying Trust” letter last week, in which I copied our CPA and attorney, our company’s general manager, Sarita, and our four kids).

I guess I should note something I haven’t made clear before. J____ is a devoutly Christian man. Very concerned (as I am) about conducting his affairs uprightly, according to Scripture. Problems can arise, of course, when two devout people bump into one another as a result of differing perspectives on what a certain Scripture may mean.

For J____, the fact that I copied my email, last week, to others: that means I am wholly in the wrong. “You talk about building or destroying trust, John! You have completely destroyed my trust in you. . . . I am of a good mind,” he said to me this morning . . . –”I am of a good mind to terminate our relationship.” 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!

I’ve already read Jay Link’s Family Wealth Counseling.

He’s issued a clarion call to pay attention not only to the financial aspects of an estate plan or legacy plan, but, I would say, he calls our attention even more to the social and spiritual/emotional issues related to one’s . . . lifetime legacy.

I chose those last two words carefully.

I think we aren’t normally challenged to think in terms of our lives when it comes to estate planning. We are led to think in terms of death, dying, and what happens after our lives are over.

Link, by contrast, calls us to Read the rest of this entry »