Money Isn’t Everything In Estate Planning
How to Pass Your Stories and Values to the Future Generations
Money may be the most talked about wealth contained within a person’s estate, but the riches of their experience and wisdom can mean even more to family members down the line. Reinforcement of family traditions can be built into your estate plan alongside your wishes regarding your money, property, and belongings. After all, what really makes a family a family is its values and traditions — not the way its finances read on paper.
It’s an excellent idea to hold a family meeting in which you discuss the sorts of things that matter to you most. In addition to the value of sharing your wisdom, you can also make it more likely that your heirs will handle their inheritance correctly if they understand the reasons behind your choices. This is just one of the many reasons to have a family discussion about your legacy and your estate plan.
How to tell your story through your estate plan
It’s a delight to get to hear your elders’ stories of their fondest memories and wildest adventures, as well as the struggles they overcame to get the family where it is today. This wisdom provides meaning for a financial legacy that otherwise might just be viewed as a windfall. As part of your estate and legacy planning, you can decide to record your own personal history. Here are a few ways: audio files, video files, photo albums, letters and other writings.
Passing your values to the next generation
Some estate planning strategies blend your finances and personal values. For example, we might have a discussion on some of your core values in life. Whether you feel most passionate about the need for your beneficiaries to travel and gain worldly experience, continue a unique family tradition like sailing or astronomy, or support meaningful charitable or spiritual work, we can draft trusts that contain funds specifically set aside for these endeavors.
- Educational provisions: If you value education, you might want to set up provisions in a trust to fund undergraduate and graduate degrees, med school, study abroad, or even community classes for your family’s future generations. Because of sharp increases in educational costs within the U.S., your grandchildren will likely stand to benefit immensely from an educational trust.
- Incentives: Similar to the way educational provisions set aside wealth for the purpose of funding a beneficiary’s schooling, incentive provisions can also help steer the course of your descendants’ lives be encouraging some paths while discouraging others. For example, an incentive line could contain instructions for disbursements to be released when the beneficiary is working a part or full-time job. Or if family vacations were an important part of your upbringing, you could set aside funds specifically for your grandchildren to experience the same wonderful tradition you enjoyed.
- Charitable trusts or foundations: Charitable trusts or foundations establish a family legacy of supporting a particular cause, but they also have the added financial benefit of reducing income and estate taxes. They are an excellent way to help a charitable organization that’s central to your core values and make your name associated with that philanthropic effort for generations to come.
Estate and legacy plan
Are you curious about exploring a few of these options in your estate and legacy plan? Give us a call today, and we can schedule an appointment to go over your many options for showcasing your memories and values in a long-lasting way that truly benefits your heirs.
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