When I use phrase Estate Planning for Human BeingsTM to describe legacy planning, I often get quizzical looks. One would think that all estate planning is for human beings, no? But the truth is that much planning focuses on an individual’s net worth, or a company’s EBITDA, and not on the uniqueness of the individual, the family, or the business.
I am not the first lawyer to embrace this kind of planning. In fact, I freely admit that I stand on the shoulders of giants. Bob Esperti and Renno Peterson developed the Loving Trust™ approach in the 1980’s and created the National Network of Estate Planning Attorneys to spread the word. Rick Randall and other Network members refined the approach into the Three Step Strategy™.
Scott Farnsworth, of the Sunbridge Legacy Builders Network is the first lawyer I ever heard talking explicitly about “legacy planning”, and that was fifteen years ago, or more. Since that time Scott has developed a broad array of tools and techniques to capture a person’s stories, wisdom and values, and pass them on to the people they care about.
At the core of legacy planning is the recognition that “People Are Different” and that a plan that does not recognize those differences will not work. An accountant friend of mine tells the story of a business owner who developed a plan to sell the family business to his son. It all looked great on paper, but blew up in the end because of the wife’s difficult relationship with her daughter-in-law.
The solution is to do the human planning from the very beginning, along with the financial planning. That is the only way to build a legacy that will last.