What are your most important assets? What assets do you want to leave your children or other beneficiaries that they can have and use the rest of their lives? How do you want to be remembered? What will be your legacy?
Surveys have shown that the top assets that most people want to leave to their children and other beneficiaries are their family values. In many surveys, monetary and other material assets are a distant second.
There is lots of rhetoric in the media about family and religious values. But have you ever tried to articulate your own core values? Have you ever communicated those core values to your children or other beneficiaries? If your values are your most important assets that you want to leave as a legacy to your children and other beneficiaries, then write them down.
For example, years ago when I was first starting my law practice and my family, I formulated my own core values. At the time, I saw all the different types of lawyers out there. I then decided what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it.
My personal core values are: tell the truth, do what is right and give people a fair shake, while focusing on family, faith and career. These are the values by which I deal with people, operate my law practice and live my life. One of the main reasons I went into estate planning is that I can stick to my own core values and make a living.
I do what I call “happy law”; in most instances, my clients are happier when they leave my office than when they came in. Most lawyers cannot say that. Whether my clients are setting up their own estate plan or administering an estate or trust after a disability or death, most of my clients are comforted, relieved or happier after the appointment than when they arrived.
When setting up estate plans, I regularly have clients that leave more of their material assets to children who more closely share the parents’ core values than other children. I often times have clients who disinherit children and/or grandchildren who have abandoned the clients’ core values.
What would you do? Your children are not necessarily entitled to any equal share of your material assets. Would you allocate more of those assets to the children who more closely follow your core values, or not?
What if you have a child who says “My values are not your values,” or “I get my values from my friends”? Well firstly, you hope that they will grow out of it, mature a little bit and be more responsible. But if your kids are already forty or fifty and currently do not share your values, there would not be a high likelihood that they ever will.
Do you want your material assets promoting values with which you do not agree? Many of my clients do not. They would rather leave it to charities which promote their core values, than to children or other family beneficiaries that do not.
An important document by which you can share your core values with your family and that they can have as your legacy after you are gone is called an ethical will. In this ethical will, you basically explain to your children what you did with regard to the distribution of your material assets, why you did it and what’s important to you.
A good workbook you can use to create your ethical will is called The Wealth of Your Life – A Step-by-Step Guide for Creating Your Ethical Will, by Susan Turnbull. This workbook does a good job of walking you through the process of putting your thoughts down on paper. You can order a copy of Susan’s workbook on HYPERLINK “http://www.yourethicalwill.com” www.yourethicalwill.com.
As Susan says, with an ethical will you can “leave all of the things you value to those you love: the value of your story; the value of your insights; the value of the intentions behind your planning; and the value of your love and feelings.” The best thing to do is to start getting it down on paper today.
By: Matthew M. Wallace, CPA JD
Published edited December 20, 2009 in The Times Herald newspaper, Port Huron, Michigan as: Discover your most important assets to share