While at the Mission India conference a couple of weeks ago, a smaller group of about 30 men met to discuss legacy planning. At one point, one of the participants asked, “How many of you received a substantial inheritance?”

Out of 30 people, one man raised his hand. One.

“Shouldn’t that tell us something?” asked the man who had raised the first question. Read the rest of this entry »

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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 »

G____, our legacy planner, asked, “Suppose we were to say a family has successfully passed on its legacy to the next generation if two things, at minimum, are true: 1) the family’s wealth is still there when the first generation has passed away, and, 2) none of the members of the second generation have seen their lives destroyed due to improper use of funds; no family relationships have been ruined as a result of strife over money.

“Of families who use traditional financial and estate planning techniques and go no further, what percentage would you guess are successful, according to this definition, in the second generation? How many wealthy families still have the wealth and are still relationally intact in the second generation?”

“Maybe one or two percent?” I suggested. Read the rest of this entry »