Shape Your Legacy with Planning

Shape Your Legacy with Planning

June 27, 2019

Legacy planning takes estate planning to another level, looking beyond the numbers—passing on your values as well as your wealth.

Choose how you want to be remembered. A legacy is about how you want to be remembered by your heirs, your colleagues, and your community. You want your legacy to have a positive effect on future generations. By conveying your values to your heirs through a legacy plan, that objective can be realized.

A legacy plan is much more than an estate plan. Think of your estate plan as the map and the legacy plan as the legend. Conventional estate planning gives advance directives naming who will receive your assets after you die. A legacy plan gives those heirs the process to implement your wishes, thus allowing your legacy to live on and evolve.

What goes into a legacy plan? Besides estate planning basics, it can include an ethical will, in which you explain your beliefs and give life lessons to your heirs. It can provide instructions for the preservation of family history documents and digital assets. It may integrate a family business succession plan, an education fund, or a foundation to gift charities and other nonprofit groups.

Legacy planning requires a skilled team. To successfully build your plan requires a team of professionals who understand how to create and implement a legacy plan. A typical legacy team will start with a financial advisor, attorney, accountant, and an insurance agent. You may also want to consider involving your children and grandchildren—it may strengthen their commitment to your plan.

You can pass on your wealth and your values.Contact our office today—we would love to talk about legacy planning with you, since this is the type of estate planning that can potentially have the greatest impact on how you will be remembered.

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