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, career, friends and faith. 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 and elder law is that I can stick to my own core values and make a living.
I do what I call “happy law”. In most instances, our clients are happier when they leave our offices than when they came in. Most attorneys can’t say that. Even in the event of a disability or death, our clients are more comforted when they leave than when they arrived in that they know matters will be handled promptly and appropriately. We tell our clients and others that if you are getting divorced, suing someone, getting sued, or you get arrested, call somebody else, because we do not handle those types of cases.
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’s 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 beneficiaries who 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. An ethical will is a document in which you basically explain to your loved ones what’s important to you. You could also include what you did with regard to the distribution of your material assets and why you did it.
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, founder and principal of Personal Legacy Advisors, LLC, a firm that advocates non-binding personal legacy documents as a component of estate and philanthropic planning. This workbook does a great job of walking you through the process of putting your thoughts down on paper. Susan Turnbull, offers the following tips for the creation of your ethical will:
Start today. If you were not here tomorrow, what is the most important thing you would not want left unsaid? Write it down – you’ve begun.
Relax. You are not trying to write for the Pulitzer Prize. What you create is a gift of yourself, made for those you love, not for an imaginary panel passing judgment on your life or your writing.
Ask yourself. What do I want to make sure my loved ones know and have in writing?
Consider it a work in progress Start by writing something short, and add more pieces or pages as you wish. It’s natural that as you and your audience grow and change you might want to modify or add to what you wrote. Don’t let the feeling that it has to be “perfect” from the beginning paralyze you. Just get started.
Be yourself. You cannot bequeath what you never owned to begin with, right?
Be careful. Be loving. The reach of your words is unknowable.
Make sure it is easy to find Keep the file accessible, so you can add to it easily. Either keep it with your legal papers or affix a note there about where to find it. You want to make sure your words find their intended audience.
Share it! Consider sharing it during your lifetime, even as you know you may add to it or change it. You will be well rewarded.
The following is an example of a brief contemporary ethical will from Susan Turnbull:
Dear Ones,
I fully expect that I will live for a very long time, to see you well into adulthood and to share your future with you. There is much to look forward to, and I am planning on being part of all the adventures and all the challenges and all the joys. But if for some reason I am not, the most important thing you need to know is how much my love for you created the person that you will remember as me. I made you, but you made me, too. I am so proud of you and so grateful to you. When the time comes, and none of us can answer the question of when that will be, you need to know that without a doubt, I was fulfilled in my life. I have had a wonderful life and I don’t want you to mourn me – maybe a little, but not too long! Carry me forward by re-creating the net that I was for you and be it for others. Carry me forward in your kitchen with our favorite coffeecake, muffins and pie, warm from the oven and made for your own delectable pleasure, or for those you care about. Carry me forward with an optimistic outlook and tenacious devotion to what you know is best. Carry me forward and I will be with you always.
Mother
Recipes attached
You can order a copy of Susan’s workbook from www.yourethicalwill.com or www.personallegacyadvisors.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 or in your computer today.
By: Matthew Wallace CPA, JD
Published edited June 8, 2014 in The Times Herald newspaper, Port Huron, Michigan as: Share what you most value with your loved ones