Legacy Planning

Wealthy People's Grandchildren are Ruined by Their Inheritance

In many nations around the world there are saying that refer to wealth disappearing after only three generations. The pattern is that a motivated person will work to build up their assets. By the time they pass on, their children are successful in their own right and are able to maintain the wealth. The grandchildren, however, are generally ruined by this unguided wealth. They seek after pleasures that wealth can provide, ignore what little they have learned about ambition and work ethic, and squander the assets that were intended to help them succeed.

How would it feel if you knew that what you left behind could make a real difference in your children's lives and potentially for the lives of your posterity for generations to come? With proper planning it is possible not only to pass on wealth to the next generation, but to do it in such a way that you:

1) Maximize your descendant's chances for success,
2) Get future generations of your family to work together,
3) Keep the money growing for future generations, AND
4) Pass on the character traits that you believe are important in life.

NOT ONLY FOR THE WEALTHY

Let me share an experience of my own that will help you visualize what this could mean for your family. My oldest daughter was a gifted second grader. We searched for a way to challenge her, but the public school system she was in did not have the resources to help us. We looked at the possibility of transferring to a better school district but it did not look like it would work for us. Finally, although I was still in law school, we decided we would send her to a private school. The expense just about ruined us, but it was important to us.

The difference was astonishing. I have never seen so many parents involved in their children's schooling. The teachers were exceptional. Much more was expected (and required) of the children and they rose to the occasion. Each Friday morning there was a school assembly. One of the classes would have a presentation for the entire school. Every child had at least one of their parents in the audience. Every child sang the school song, and every child from Kindergarten through 6TH Grade sat still and listened through the entire presentation. It was a mazing. The culture was completely different -- like nothing I had ever experienced before.

I began to understand as time went on, that a lot of parents were paying for their children's schooling because it would prepare them to be much greater successes in college, career, and life. However, the real story is not in the children of doctor's, businessmen, and lawyers with whom I rubbed shoulders. The real story is in the one child who walked to the school from a nearby poor neighborhood. I asked around about him and found that parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles were all sacrificing to send this one child to a prestigious school. The hopes of his relatively simple, uneducated family, served to lift this child to a hight that few children are privileged to obtain. This extended family understood what it was to plan for a legacy.

HOW IT WORKS

This is what makes Advanced Legal Planning a beautiful thing full of love. Using Legacy Planning, your family will learn to work together and working together they will learn to support one another in:

- Helping each family member find what they love and have every opportunity to become successful at it
- Holding each family member accountable for the help they have received and guiding them as necessary to achieve results
- Teaching good character traits and involving family members with people who will help them develop and grow
- Educating the next generation to take over the family finances
- Managing the assets in such a way that they grow to support ever greater numbers of family in finding success and giving back to the community

This is a very involved area of planning that requires commitment and determination to stay the course. However, once put in place, it is a thing of beauty that can help preserve and sustain a family in ways you never thought possible.