Legacy planning begins with awareness. It’s the idea that issues like a family vision and relational health deserve the same attention as the financial and legal complexities of traditional financial planning.

You want to see your clients succeed. Help them do so by considering financial wealth in the rich context of family identity, family communication and more.

How do you introduce legacy planning to your clients? Consider asking some of the following good questions:

• Have you considered how your wealth will affect your children?
• Do your children know about your financial and estate plans?
• Have you had a family meeting?
• What values do you want to pass on to your kids and grandkids?

As they think on these important questions, you can be available to help navigate the discussion and the plans being created.

Providing charitable advice can play a pivotal role for your practice for several reasons.

• Charitable planning advice can deepen client relationships. When you move into the charitable area of a client’s life, you are tapping into the passion of an individual’s heart.
• Charitable advice often affords the opportunity to meet the client’s children and get involved in the family’s giving, management and estate planning. It furthers generational relationships and opens the door for greater generosity possibilities.

As you guide clients in their charitable giving, be sure to take advantage of opportunities to give from complex assets, like stock, real estate or business interest. While 90% of the average American citizen’s wealth is in non-cash assets, 80% of giving is still only from cash. One of the things I have encountered in my time with The Signatry is that many advisors and givers are still unaware of these strategies.

Read The Signatry's Asset Giving Overview

Add value to the estate planning process by coaching your clients to add personal context through a legacy letter to accompany their plan documents. Your clients may wish to include

• aspects of their life story,
• core values and lessons,
• the reason for certain gifts,
• and their affection and hopes for kids and grandkids.

This document will likely be the most meaningful part of the plan for those who read it. Get started with my Guide to Purposeful Language.

• Estate plans offer several options for generosity to continue beyond a single lifetime.
• Consider designating a donor advised fund as a beneficiary, allowing your clients to efficiently and flexibly extend the impact of their charitable giving.
• A succession plan for the fund offers a way to include members of the next generations in meaningful ways.