1 Why Trust This Guide?

Bennie figured he had just a few years left, although who knew? He counted every day as a blessing, especially as he felt his verve for life slowly decline and saw his health decline faster. Those declines, though, had him asking what am I leaving behind? Throughout his life, Bennie hadn’t thought much about his legacy. He instead just lived. But lately, he had been thinking about his impact and what he would leave behind. Bennie even wished he’d thought much earlier in his life about the legacy his life would leave. Yet regrets weren’t going to do anyone any good, Bennie figured. Instead, he decided to see what he could do to improve his legacy before it was too late. He only needed to know where to turn for help.

Advice

Advice is only good when you’re ready for it. And even then, some advice is good, other advice is better, and some advice is no good at all. The thing about advice isn’t so much its author. You can have all the experience and skill you wish but still make a mess of things when giving others advice. Don’t listen to someone just because they’ve been around the block. They may have missed a few things that they should have noticed along the way. When you finally open your eyes to see that you could maybe use a little help, a little strategic advice, maybe a little nudge here or there, don’t trust everything you hear. Blind trust may have been what left you short of your goal, missing out on important things. Instead, evaluate the advice you hear. Let the advice you hear work its way through the filter of your own experience. 

Humility

Especially filter the advice that you hear through your experiences where you realize now that you fell short. Failure, faults, and shortcomings are fabulous filters, when you know that they’re there. When you have the humility to see how poorly or inadequately you handled a responsibility or opportunity is when you’re ready to change. Honest humility is a powerful stance. Real humility is not denigrating oneself just to look and feel better. Authentic humility trusts more in the truth than in oneself. That’s what makes it so powerful: honest humility is the lens of truth. Honest humility won’t accept sugar coating faults or buttering up. So as you read this strategic advice, thinking about what you want your legacy to be, keep humbly in mind what your legacy just might be if you don’t adjust course a little. Think, in other words, about what you don’t want your legacy to be. Filter this advice through your shortcomings and faults. If you do so, you just might be able to make those necessary or helpful adjustments to burnish your legacy.

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2 What Is a Legacy?

Years after her mother had passed, Dawn remained in awe at the legacy that her mother had left. Dawn could see everywhere the evidence of her mother’s impression, not just on Dawn herself but also on her mom’s other two children, Dawn’s half-siblings born after her mother had remarried. Dawn could also see her mom’s lasting impact on Dawn’s own children, her mom’s grandchildren. And Dawn still saw evidence of how her mother had blessed the little school where her mom had taught for many years and the church where her mom had married, attended, and served. People still told Dawn that they missed her mother, years after her passing. And that, more than anything, told Dawn that her mom had left the richest legacy.

Definition

Isn’t that a legacy, the impression that one’s life leaves after one is gone? A legacy is a residue still leaving a gleam or, on the equation’s other side, a tarnish years or decades after one passes. A legacy is an impact still felt across the years and even across the generations. A legacy is a resonance that continues to echo, attune, and align long after one is gone. A legacy isn’t purely sentiment, although positive emotions and affinities of the sentimental sort, or on the other side negative impacts and offenses, can carry great weight well beyond the grave. Yet a legacy is more than memories, good or bad. A legacy is leaving patterns that others unconsciously follow, for better or worse, for generations. A legacy sets loose angels to bless or demons to curse, season after season, decade after decade, down through the ages. A legacy is a course or trajectory of one’s life that others recognize and may imitate or avoid and eschew. A legacy is a powerfully good, or powerfully haunting, thing.

Difference

Who, really, shows concern for their legacy? More of us would, if we thought about it. If you don’t think that legacies make a difference, then you haven’t been studying history. Nor have you been looking very closely at your own family line. Generational blessings and curses are a real thing, whether you look at statistics or idiographic accounts. Families aren’t incidental. They’re instead society’s bedrock. And the reason for their immensely important role is that families most effectively raise and socialize the young. Overall, children raised in families have faster and better mental, physical, and social development than children raised institutionally. They also have overall better behavior and attachment. As adults, we affect the people closest to us. We pour ourselves into and over our family members and, if we’re strong, faithful, and vital enough, our neighbors and communities. Norms, values, traditions, customs, attitudes, expectations, language, behaviors, and even specific skills get passed down across generations. Legacies make differences, huge differences.

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3 Who Cares About My Legacy?

Zora watched the young women in her group chatter about their kids and households. She remembered those days when she was just happy to get out with friends her own age, as much as she loved her household. Zora hadn’t initially known what had drawn her to this group of women, a generation younger than her. Yet she soon realized that it was to broaden and deepen her legacy. Zora wanted not just to have cared passionately for her household but also to have cared in the same way for other households, for other women who were carrying their own torches through the wilderness and toward the palace. Zora was in sight of the palace now. She just wanted to be sure that every other woman caring for her household would see the palace, too. And Zora wanted no less than that to be her legacy.

You

The first person who cares about your legacy is you. That is, you should care. If you’re not caring about your legacy, whether consciously or unconsciously, then you’re missing something very important in life. You don’t have to be thinking about legacy all the time. Indeed, you might be unhealthy if you did. But it’s your legacy that nudges you to make that phone call to check on a friend that you should have made last week. It’s your legacy that gets you up out of the easy chair you finally settled into at the end of a wearying day, to play catch with the neighbor’s lonely kid. Your legacy is why you said yes to serving on the parks board a second term when you could instead have been home with your feet up watching your favorite show. And it’s your legacy that nudges you to still be wise with your finances when you no longer need to be so wise to provide for your own needs. Legacy silently spurs all those little and big things you do that sow seeds and to tend their sprouts, when you have no personal need or strong interest in doing so other than the residue of hope it leaves. You need that silent spur to move out of yourself and upward toward the light.

Parents

Your parents need your legacy, too. Parents might be the last ones you’d think would be concerned about your legacy, when you are a part of theirs. But that’s exactly the point. Your parents see in the lasting quality of your actions the influence of their own actions. Few things are more painful to a parent than to see their adult child doing or becoming something that they regret, while believing the looming development to be their own fault in how they raised their child. And few things are more satisfying to a parent than to see their adult child doing and becoming things that they admire, while hoping the flowering to have something to do with how they raised their child. Children are a legacy. When you care for your own legacy, you care for your parents’ legacy. Your parents care about your legacy because your legacy is their own. The command to honor your mother and father doesn’t mean an occasional obsequious bow. The command instead means to do and be what would make them believe in the honorable quality of their own legacy, of which you are the biggest part. I knew a mom from a poor neighborhood whose greatest hope was that her children would stay out of jail. Sounds like the least that we could do for our parents, doesn’t it? Do more.

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4 How Can I Shape My Legacy?

The realization came like a thunderbolt: Carl was wasting his legacy. A combination of things pointed him to it. His wife had talked glowingly of the legacy that her dad had left, in just the way that a wife has of sending a message without seeming to send a message. Carl had let the comment pass. But then, a couple weeks later, one of the guys at the golf course had joked that Carl was leaving quite a legacy when the delicate subject of Carl’s latest slip up came up. Carl had laughed the comment off. Yet late that night, the juxtaposition of the comments about the two legacies, his father-in-law’s good and his own not so much, struck him like lightning. Carl’s only question was what to do about it.

Attention

Attention is all we have. Pay attention to that which you pay attention. If you want to improve your legacy, just give it a little thought. The observer affects the observed. The universe’s nature is to change according to the attention we give it. We don’t control the change, but we certainly influence it with our attention. And our attention influences us. That’s the nature of addiction, which starts slowly with the sparest bit of attention but then grows with the more attention we give its object, until the object is in control. We interact with the things to which we devote attention, and the things to which we devote attention interact with us, shaping us. Sometimes, those things even seize us. Don’t give yourself to things that distract, detract, and destroy. Instead, give your attention to larger things, greater things that lift you up and build you up so that you can do the same for others. Giving your attention to your legacy is giving yourself to a higher thing because your legacy lies outside yourself, above and beyond. 

Intention

Intention, then, begins with attention. If your intent or desire is to shape and improve your legacy, you have already taken the first proper step by giving your legacy your attention. To turn attention into intention, reflect. This guide’s greatest contribution to your legacy is to help you reflect over it. Consider your legacy. Mull it. Dwell on it. And as you do so, you’ll begin to shape your legacy, and your legacy will begin to shape you. Intention is simply the desire to see an end brought about. Yes, we pave our road to hell with good intentions. Intentions are not all that a better legacy takes. Actions must follow. But we’ll get to action. First, though, give your legacy your attention long and hard enough to begin to develop some intentions. Those intentions will soon come. And slowly, you can turn your intentions to action as you develop a forward, outward, and upward outlook.

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5 How Can I Leave a Family Legacy?

Dan had a haunting feeling that night that his grandkids weren’t going to amount to much. It wasn’t the first time he’d had that feeling. Their mom and dad, his son and daughter-in-law, had their own issues, which he had already seen his grandkids, now five and seven years old, unfortunately reflect. What was different this time was that Dan had the clear sense that he could trace their issues right back to him and even beyond to his own dad and granddad. When Dan looked at his grandkids, he felt as if he could have been looking at himself sixty years earlier. And for the first time, Dan had the conviction that he ought to do something about it. If it was too late for his son and daughter-in-law, maybe it wasn’t too late for the grandkids.

Dedication

Families are fun, funny, and fascinating. They’re also exasperating. Families reveal both the capacity we have for loving and caring for one another and its obstacles and limitations. We see in families the best of human nature and its worst. Yet we also see in families the capacity we have to leave a legacy. Families show us that legacies are inevitable, one way or the other. Ignore your long-term impact on others when raising your children, and you may be disappointed, even frightened, to learn the effect. On the other hand, pour the best of yourself into your children and grandchildren every day, not just your excess but beyond exhaustion, and you’ll see the beauty and benefit that sacrifice for one’s legacy can make. Families are the immediate and natural objects of our affections and thus our legacy field. Sow deeply and richly in that field, and water and weed the field continually, and you won’t regret it.

Care

The primary way in which we express our legacy through our family is to care for it. Care can look differently depending on who is supplying it and in what situation. Care may mean the dozens of little and big things that keeping a home for a spouse and child takes. Care may mean showing up at parent/teacher conferences, athletics competitions, and recitals, and ferrying youths around to lessons, jobs, and camps. Care may mean quiet times reading together, leisurely strolls and chats, or raucous games of skill or chance. Care may mean taking a shared interest in hobbies like model building or recreations like golf, tennis, or camping. Care may even mean making special creative meals, drawings, bracelets, scarves, carvings, furniture, or bouquets as frequent gifts for family members. Care has a hundred ways to express itself, even in something so simple as rising to greet one’s family member at the door on each return home. Make your legacy one of care, and you will have shared the richest of family legacy gifts.

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6 How Can I Leave a Community Legacy?

Gwen loved her lakeside community. She’d moved there many years ago, long enough ago to think of it as her hometown. And Gwen knew she’d never leave. What she appreciated most about the place was that its residents treated it like their community. They weren’t just living there to get on with life. They were living there to care for one another and their community. Everywhere one turned, and in every season, you could see the community’s life. Gwen could also see how certain community leaders both today and long ago had made the place the way it was. And something told her that she could be among those leading benefactors.

Communities

Americans are famous for being itinerant. We are always on the move. Yet many of us spend nearly all our lives within about a ten mile radius of home. Indeed, we spend a great deal of time at home. We also draw a lot from our home communities, not just as a safe, secure, and familiar place, but also for a sense of history, identity, and belonging. The answer to the question where you’re from isn’t about an address but about an experience, culture, and affinity. We draw a lot from our communities. And for a broad and lasting legacy, we can give a lot to our communities, too. Blessing your family is a good legacy start. Blessing your community gives your legacy another dimension, one that your family can also appreciate and from which they, too, can benefit. 

Neighborhood

Your community begins with your neighborhood, those who live close enough around you to see you often around your home. When we think of positively impacting the lives of others outside of our family, we may cast our vision far. We may think of needful populations like the disabled or homeless, ready to go look for how and where to serve. But our neighbors are right there. And neighbors have needs and interests, too. Indeed, that’s the special opportunity that neighbors present for encouraging them with a legacy. We do not seek them out specifically to serve their needs but instead bless and encourage them naturally. A legacy need not always solve problems. A legacy can instead simply flow generously and naturally to those who are nearest you. Find ways to celebrate and care for your neighbors. Organize periodic neighborhood get-togethers. Keep track of neighborhood illnesses, injuries, and hospitalizations, where a neighbor might need children watched, meals prepared, or pets fed. Help a neighbor with a yard project. Configure the outside of your home with gardens, walks, and seating to welcome neighbors to walk and stop by to say hello. And then treat your neighbors with the kindness and interest you treat your family members and yourself. In whatever way you see available, let your legacy flow through your neighborhood. 

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7 How Can I Leave a Career Legacy?

For better or worse, Doug had devoted his life to his profession. Doug had a family. Yet when Doug was being honest with himself, he’d admit that he hadn’t cared much for his family. Oh, he’d provided everything his family needed. And he loved and appreciated his family. But as far as giving his family his time and attention, well, he hadn’t done so. His wife had poured herself into their family, while Doug had instead poured himself into his career. As his career wound down, Doug decided to do better with his family. Yet Doug also realized that while he might not yet have much of a legacy with his family, maybe he had nonetheless left a significant legacy through his career.

Careers

A career isn’t just a long-term job. A career is instead a field to which one devotes oneself, more in the nature of a ministry or mission than simply employment or a vocation. You can and do make a difference in a career, especially one to which you give your attention, creativity, and energy. Thus, of course one can make a legacy through a career. Family is the first place one naturally thinks of a legacy. After all, children carry on the family name, look, and lineage. We pass our estates to our family members, not generally to our employers or co-workers. Yet one can still make a rich legacy through a career, even if a legacy of a different sort. Be legacy minded in your career, and you may notice how much more effectively, creatively, and generously you work.

Workplace

The first place you leave a legacy in a career to which you devote yourself is your workplace. Every workplace has a culture and spirit. The culture of your workplace arises out of the attitudes, commitments, and contributions of each of its members over time. Some of us, though, leave a greater workplace imprint than others. Those imprints can be either positive or negative. It only requires one negligent chef to spoil the soup. But with an inspired outlook and consistent application of your best energies, you can make your workplace a special locus of care, courage, and inspiration. You’ll notice the legacy’s presence some months after someone of that bonus ilk retires from your workplace. Someone will comment that they sure miss Jack or sure miss Jenny around the workplace, referring to the positive attitude, ambition, joy, hopeful spirit, and abundant energy that the retired figure shared, or their technical mastery, attention to detail, relationship skills, or other personality, talents, disciplines, and characteristics. Their absence, though, begins rather than ends their legacy. The very fact that you notice their absence reminds you of the marks and commitments they left behind. Notice and refine your own contributions to your workplace so that you, too, leave a legacy.

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8 How Can I Leave a School Legacy?

Oliver never felt more alive and attuned than when he was thinking of his college. He had graduated more than two decades ago, and yet he was still enamored of his years there and how they had shaped him so deeply. Oliver had met and married his wife there, chosen his career field there, and had his first child there. Oliver and his wife had named their three children after college mentors and friends. Oliver had taken his first job with an alum from the college, where several other alums also worked. His second job had been with another alum, and now in his third job he still kept in touch with those alums as his supportive professional network. Oliver’s best friends, all these years later, were his former college roommates. And now, one of Oliver’s children was about to graduate from the college, while another child was just enrolling and the third child they expected to enroll. No wonder Oliver was thinking how he might leave a legacy with his college. 

Schools

We spend a lot of time in schools, and so it stands to reason that schools might be a ground on which to grow one’s legacy. Elementary and secondary schools occupy twelve or thirteen years of one’s life. Those years are significant, while some of those schools and their teachers and programs may be deeply formative. Wealthy parents don’t send their children to premier prep schools for convenience. They instead expect those schools to make significant differences in their children’s lives. Same with not-so-wealthy parents who sacrifice financially to send their children to private schools. And the same can also be said for parents of all socioeconomic levels who choose their residences for the quality of the district’s schools or who send their children across town to a school of choice. Parents, students, and families across generations can grow very close to their primary and secondary schools that shape family legacies, enough that families often leave their own legacies there.

Colleges

Parents, students, and families across generations can also grow very close to their colleges, universities, and graduate and professional programs. College years can be huge transition years from childhood and youth into adulthood. Emancipation, new adult friendships that last a lifetime, engagement and marriage, new perspectives on the world, mentorships, child bearing and rearing, internships, career choice, and first career jobs can all occur in or immediately after college. College graduates who go on to graduate or professional school find the additional years of schooling even more formative. Many students enter with one identity and set of values, commitments, and experiences, and leave with new identity and experiences, and refined values and commitments. No wonder, then, that colleges and college life can be so impactful on us. And no wonder, then, that many of us desire to give back, indeed to pursue a college legacy. 

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9 How Can I Leave a Church Legacy?

Everywhere Martha looked at church, she saw signs of her involvement, from the walls she’d painted to the banners she’d sown, the classrooms where she taught youth and adults, and the sanctuary she helped to decorate. Martha had even served as a volunteer in the office, gone on adult and youth mission trips, and helped to fund the new classroom wing. Martha was no place more at home, no place more welcomed, and no place better known than in her church. Martha knew her earthly service would soon end and looked forward to continuing her service in heaven. The only thing she wondered was whether she had left anything undone.

Church

Building a legacy within a faith community is both like being involved in your neighborhood, workplace, school, or other community locations and unlike involvement in those other places. One difference has to do with the voluntariness of church involvement. You choose whether and where to connect and attend. Another difference has to do with the focus of church. That focus isn’t so much on you, who you are, what you need, and what you’re doing but instead on God, who he is, what he desires, what he supplies, and what he’s doing. A church’s activities, especially its prime activity of worship, centers not on you but on God. Indeed, a church isn’t a location. It is instead a body, with Christ at its head and its members the body’s living, breathing parts. Your legacy has a lot to do with how you join and serve in the body but even more to do with how you relate to the body’s head, to the Lord Jesus Christ. When thinking of your church legacy, keep your relationship with Christ and the honor you give him forefront in mind. That’s the primary way to build a church legacy.

Devotion

Your devotion, and the faith your devotion leaves behind in your family members, friends, and acquaintances, is indeed your greatest church legacy. The greatest legacy you can leave, not just around church but in anything else you do on earth, is to express your devotion to the highest. To pursue a legacy is to aim far, long, and high, beyond the horizon of your own life to the eternal realm beyond. That highest possible aim is what gives life its full dimension. Aim only for this life, and your aim will fall well short of its possibilities. Aim for the realm and eternal day beyond this life, and you’ll live the full life that leaves a rich legacy. Full devotion to the one loving God suffuses your life with his infinitely greater life. Make that commitment to trust and follow him. Then share that commitment with those around you, and you’ll have left the best legacy that you possibly can. 

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10 How Can I Leave a Charitable Legacy?

Gina didn’t want to just give money to charity. She instead wanted to be involved. She wanted a hand in, indeed two hands in and maybe both feet, too. Gina’s trouble was that she didn’t see a charity in her area that was doing the charitable work that she believed needed doing. And she couldn’t interest any existing charity in helping her to do that needed work. Each charity she contacted had its own mission and programs, and none were willing to extend their mission, reputation, and resources to address the charitable need Gina so clearly saw. And so Gina finally resolved to start her own charitable organization.

Donations

Donating to charity is certainly one way to enhance your legacy, as a prior chapter already suggests. Be financially generous with charitable causes, especially if you lack the time, talents, resources, skills, insight, ability, or energy to engage in charitable works on your own. Give regularly to your favorite charities, and give specially when they present to you an attractive special cause. Your regular gifts can enable your favorite charity to operate its programs, pay its staff, and maintain its facility. Your special gifts can enable your favorite charity to expand its programs and improve its facility or develop new facilities to reach and serve more disadvantaged individuals and families having servable needs. Leave a legacy of charitable giving that your children, grandchildren, and broader community can appreciate and likewise pursue.

Taxes

The tax laws create certain advantages to giving to charities. One advantage is that donations to a charitable organization that the IRS recognizes as tax exempt may be deductible from your taxable income. If your donations exceed the standard deduction and otherwise qualify, you may be able to significantly reduce your federal and state income taxes through charitable giving. Consult your tax preparer or attorney. Another advantage that the tax laws offer is to donate securities to avoid paying capital gains taxes on their appreciation. Rather than selling the security, paying the tax, and donating the remainder, you may be able to donate the security itself, the full value of which the charity can receive, while you avoid paying any capital gains tax. You may also be able to donate a qualified distribution from your tax-advantaged retirement accounts to avoid paying taxes on required minimum distributions (RMDs). Again, consult your tax preparer or attorney. Leave a legacy of charitable giving, while taking best lawful advantage of tax incentives. 

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11 Should I Have a Foundation?

Darnell hadn’t expected to accumulate the wealth that he did over the course of his lifetime. He hadn’t been a huge wage earner. Darnell had just worked steadily all his life, while avoiding borrowing, paying cash for everything, living modestly, saving religiously, and investing wisely. Investing may have been Darnell’s gift. While his savings had been significant, over the long term his investing had doubled, tripled, and then quadrupled and more his savings, until he was wealthy beyond his dreams. Except that Darnell had never really dreamed of wealth. He would rather give it all away. And that realization was when he began thinking about a foundation. 

Definition

A foundation is a charitable entity that has raised its substantial funding from a single individual, family, or corporation, and does not provide charitable service but instead supports other charities financially. A foundation is a funding source for other charities. A foundation is, in a practical sense, a large pile of money waiting for its distribution to charities providing services. If you have substantial wealth to give for charitable causes, so substantial that you need an orderly way for distributing it over time to qualified charities, then a foundation may be for you. A foundation can last as long as its funding lasts, which may be in perpetuity if the foundation’s intent is to preserve principal and spend earnings. Your foundation can certainly outlast you, continuing your legacy of giving long after you’ve passed. During your lifetime, your private foundation can also give you a rewarding ministry of giving through which to promote and enhance your legacy.

Identity

When you form a foundation, you choose its name. The name of your foundation can contribute to your legacy. You may name your foundation using your full name, your last name, your name and your spouse’s name, or another family name meaningful to you and connected with your heritage and identity. How you identify your foundation may enhance your legacy. You can also choose a name associated with the cause your foundation will pursue, the locale or population you wish to serve, the goal you wish to achieve, or the attribute you wish to enhance. Don’t hesitate to make your foundation reflect your commitments, values, identity, and aspirations. Develop your foundation’s story, account, theme, image, and other marks, signifiers, and symbols to reflect your deepest aspirations. Your foundation may then greatly enhance your legacy. 

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12 Should I Execute a Will?

Eugene had no illusions. He knew that his overseas travels carried significant health, safety, and security risks. And so Eugene wanted to be sure that his legal affairs, especially those involving his family, were fully in order. He was pretty sure that he should get a will in place. At least, that’s what he’d heard, although Eugene didn’t really know why, what the will would accomplish, or what to do about it. But he figured that he’d better find out fast and then do something about it. He had just two weeks left to get everything in place before he left on his overseas trip.

Definition

A will is a properly executed legal instrument that governs the payment of your debts and disposition of your net assets after your death. State law determines the requirements for proper execution of a will, to ensure the will’s reliability. You can imagine the lengths that dishonest presumptive heirs might go to forge or alter a will, to gain more favorable terms than the decedent’s actual will provided. State law may also place limits on a will, for instance by requiring notice to creditors and payment of just debts out of the decedent’s estate before any designated distributions to beneficiaries under the will, whether the will provides for those debt payments or not. State law may also grant rights superior to the will, such as the right of a spouse to elect a share against the will. State law may also determine what assets fall within or outside of the decedent’s estate, such as real or personal property held jointly with rights of survivorship. A will is, in short, an imperfect but still helpful and generally effective instrument, for determining your legacy. Put a thoughtful will in place, and you’ll have guided and aided your legacy.

Purpose

You execute a will for several purposes. Obviously, you execute a will to ensure that the individuals or entities whom you wish to favor with your net assets after your passing receive those assets. Yet a will has other purposes. Your will also typically designates the personal representative, sometimes called an executor, who will ensure that everyone carries out your wishes. Naming your personal representative is an act of honor and trust. You may, for instance, honor your eldest adult child with the responsibility of acting as your personal representative, presuming you trust your eldest child and your eldest child has the skill, judgment, and maturity. Your will may also name recommended guardians for your minor children, subject to the probate court’s approval. Your will’s overall purpose is to ensure reasonable peace, order, and efficiency in the management of your affairs after your passing. Putting a will in place can make that peace and order an important part of your legacy.

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13 Whom Should I Make My Heirs?

Randall had no idea that the decisions would be as hard as they were. When Randall and his wife met with the attorney to draw up their wills, they had already agreed pretty much on how they would handle things. They would each leave the marital home and their retirement, checking, and savings accounts to one another, for the survivor to pass on to their children and grandchildren on the survivor’s own demise. But they planned together for Randall to bequeath his investment accounts and business interests to their children and grandchildren on his demise, whether his wife predeceased him or not. And they agreed to favor their two most-responsible adult children to whom they were closest, while somewhat disfavoring their two other adult children with whom they barely had relationships. But when it came right down to it, Randall wasn’t sure of anything. He didn’t really know why he was about to do what they were planning to do.

Deciding

Many regard the decision as to whom to make one’s heirs as the biggest legacy question. In some families, particularly those having insubstantial property to transfer from one generation to another, heirs are not a big issue. The legacy is instead in the love, society, companionship, memories, values, and commitments the decedent reflected, not in the property the decedent left behind. Yet in other families and situations, particularly those involving transfers and dispositions of substantial generational wealth, the decision as to whom to include and whom to exclude as an heir, and what divisions of what property and interests to make in a will and broader estate plan, are indeed huge legacy questions. And that’s true not only because the property may be so substantial as to be life changing for its recipients but also because of the relationship and values the inclusion or exclusion of heirs reflects. Excluding an obvious and natural heir is surely a judgment of some sort, one that may, for better or worse, change a legacy.

Goals

When deciding on heirs, one does well to think first about legacy goals. Testators can have several legacy goals they hope to achieve through choosing heirs. At the deepest level, testators generally want their decisions on heirs to reflect certain values and commitments. Otherwise, they may as well just roll the dice, making bequests into a game of chance. Equality can be a major goal. Some testators, for instance, will treat their children equally no matter how good or bad, and close or distant, their relationships are with their children. Other testators may have equity rather than equality as their goal. If one child cared for, served, and honored the testator far more than another child, throughout a lifetime and especially in later years, and that child would benefit far more from an inheritance and even needs an inheritance because of the child’s sacrifices for the testator, then equity would demand substantially different bequests. Provision and care can be other goals, measuring bequests by the degree to which children may need or benefit from them. Whoever your natural heirs are, and whatever your circumstance is, first consider the goals you want your bequests to achieve and the values you want your bequests to honor.

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14 Should I Execute a Trust?

Gary and his wife had two lovely adult children, a son in college and a daughter just out of college. Gary had married his young wife later in life, in the middle of a successful business career. He was still in business but beyond typical retirement age. His health also wasn’t that great. With his heart and diabetes issues, Gary knew it was high time that he put a sound estate plan in place. The only trouble he could see, though, was that his adult daughter, as sweet as she was, had no financial sense. She was also so innocent as to be gullible. Anyone could easily take advantage of her. Gary and his wife wanted to bless both their children with a substantial legacy out of Gary’s business interests. But Gary didn’t want to see his daughter promptly lose her legacy to scam or swindle. Gary knew he needed a sound solution.

Definition

A trust is a legal construct in which the grantor places valuable property or other interests in the hands of a trustee to hold for the benefit of the designated trust beneficiary. The grantor is the one who owns and controls the valuable interest and wants to see it managed for a specific person or benefit. The trustee is the one who holds and manages the interest for the benefit that the trust document specifies. Rather than just give or transfer the interest to the beneficiary, the grantor conveys the interest into the trust for the trustee’s management. A trust presumes that the trustee’s management will better accomplish the purposes for the conveyance, to promote the interests of the trust beneficiary, than a direct transfer into the control of the beneficiary. A trust has a purpose to preserve assets for the beneficiary, when the beneficiary might not do so, due to some circumstance or disability. 

Purpose

The purpose of a trust is indeed to preserve, pursue, and promote whatever benefit the trust designates, typically to further the interests of a person, family or group of people, organization, or cause. Individuals and families use trusts to hold property for a minor child, mentally incompetent adult child, spouse unsophisticated in financial and legal affairs, or other family members who might be subject to duress or coercion to invade and waste the trust principal. If, for instance, you wish to leave your children equal inheritances, but one child has a severe drug addiction on which that child would waste the inheritance, then you might place that child’s inheritance in a trust managed by a responsible person for that child’s long-term benefit. Yet trusts can also promote a cause or public interest. If, for instance, you wanted your family farm to remain farmland after your demise, rather than have your heirs promptly sell it off for subdivision housing, you might place the farm in a land-conservation trust. Trusts can be enormously effective means for enhancing legacies of private care and public benefit. 

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15 Do I Need a Power of Attorney?

Artie was finally going in for the bypass that his cardiac surgeon had recommended. Artie had stalled for as long as he dared, in order to finish the last big business deal on which he was working, the one that would make his name and fortune. But now, it was time. Artie knew the recovery would be long and difficult. He also knew that recovery wasn’t certain. The last thing that Artie needed to do before going under the knife was to put an estate plan in place. Indeed, Artie was already getting questions from the hospital and his business partner about powers of attorney. 

Definition

A power of attorney is a legal document granting a competent adult individual the authority to temporarily conduct one’s affairs in one’s absence or during one’s disability. Powers of attorney can be great conveniences for individuals who are planning travel, submitting to surgeries, or just taking breaks from managing their legal, business, and other personal and financial affairs. A power of attorney can enable a spouse, adult child, trusted business partner, or professional fiduciary to relieve the one granting the power from having to act in their own interest, when they either cannot so act or wish not to do so for a defined, usually short period. 

Types

Your legacy may benefit from having more than one type of power of attorney in place. A first type of power of attorney enables the designated fiduciary to make legal, financial, or business decisions, as a grantor might ask a spouse, business partner, attorney, accountant, or other close family member or trusted professional to do during the grantor’s hiatus. A second type of power of attorney enables the designated fiduciary to make healthcare decisions for the grantor, as a grantor might ask a spouse or adult child to do during the grantor’s surgery or other disabling illness, injury, or treatment. A third type of power of attorney provides for the temporary guardianship of a minor child to make decisions about the child’s daily care, supervision, and medical care, as parents might ask a relative or close friend to do when away together on a vacation without their child. You should already see how powers of attorney can keep order in your affairs to promote your legacy.

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16 Should I Arrange a Guardianship?

Michelle and her husband were greatly relieved at their arrangement. Now, they could only hope that it worked. Michelle and her husband had two sons, both now adults. Their older son was hardworking and unmarried, living in a condominium. Their younger son had never worked. Indeed, he’d been modestly mentally disabled since birth. He could communicate with difficulty and generally care for himself when alone, provided that he had substantial structure and support in place. He had, though, to live with a caretaker who was generally present or always available on short notice. Michelle and her husband, aging fast and soon no longer able to care for their younger son, had just arranged for their older son to take over their younger son’s guardianship. They hoped the new arrangement would last.

Definition

Guardianships can be an important part of a family legacy. A guardianship places a competent adult individual in care and custody of a minor or mentally disabled ward, to make decisions for the ward’s health and welfare. A guardian takes a role equivalent to the parent of a minor child, although the ward for whom the guardian cares need not be a child and may instead be an adult of limited capacity more like a child. Lawyers and judges sometimes refer to a guardian as acting in loco parentis, which is Latin for in place of the parent. The guardian provides or arranges for the ward’s housing, food, clothing, education, medical care, and other needs. The guardian may also manage the ward’s financial and legal affairs, although a guardian may alternatively defer those duties to a conservator. When your family includes individuals with limited capacity to care for themselves, a guardianship could be your legacy answer.

Purpose

A guardianship’s general purpose is to ensure adequate care and supervision for the mentally disabled ward. More specifically, a guardianship’s purpose is to put in place a trusted individual with the authority to make care and supervision decisions for a mentally incompetent person, that a  probate court can oversee, review, and approve. Society doesn’t want mentally incompetent folks wandering around unable to care for themselves. Nor does society want untrustworthy individuals manipulating and preying upon those mentally incompetent individuals to their harm or disadvantage. Thus, state legislatures give probate courts the authority to appoint trustworthy guardians to make decisions about the care of mentally incompetent individuals, under the court’s supervision. Guardianships can be contentious and difficult, particularly when the ward believes in the ward’s own competence but evidence suggests otherwise. Yet the system is generally sound and reliable. Use it wisely if you have mentally incompetent individuals in your family for whom your legacy should provide care.

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17 Should I Arrange a Conservatorship?

Louise’s adult daughter was a wreck. Indeed, Louise’s daughter had been in a wreck, a terrible motor-vehicle accident that broke so many bones and left her with such a serious closed-head injury that she was in a special home for the brain injured, at least for the time being. Fortunately, motor-vehicle insurance was paying for the medical and institutional care. Moreover, Louise’s daughter would soon receive a substantial liability-insurance settlement. Unfortunately, Louise’s daughter wasn’t presently mentally competent to manage her financial and legal affairs. Louise had thus worked closely with her daughter’s attorney, preparing to undertake a conservatorship to handle the settlement and manage her daughter’s finances, at least for now. What would happen later, would happen later.

Definition

A conservatorship appoints a competent and trustworthy adult to manage the financial and legal affairs of a minor child or incompetent adult. Parents usually handle the few and modest financial and legal transactions that minor children may require or from which they may benefit. A parent, for instance, may open a small savings account in joint name with a minor child, for the child to deposit allowances, gifts, and modest earnings, to learn financial management. A parent might also sign a contract and note for the minor child to acquire a first motor vehicle before age eighteen. No conservatorship would be necessary for those transactions in the parent’s own name on the child’s behalf. Yet minor children sometimes require more-significant legal or financial transactions, such as when a child suffers an injury for which another person owes the child a liability settlement. In those cases, the probate court may appoint the parent as a conservator to approve the settlement and handle the proceeds. Incompetent adults may also need a conservator in similar and other situations.

Distinction

A conservatorship is not a guardianship. A conservatorship manages financial and legal affairs. A guardianship manages care and supervision. A conservator is often an accountant, financial advisor, lawyer, or other professional with financial and legal knowledge. A guardian is often a family member or, if instead a professional, then a social worker, nurse, or geriatric or life care manager who knows personal care and medical needs. As the prior chapter indicates, probate courts in some states may authorize a guardian not only to manage the ward’s medical and other care decisions but also to manage the ward’s legal and financial affairs. But just as commonly, a probate court may divide responsibilities for legal and financial affairs on the one hand, and medical and other personal care on the other hand, between a conservator and guardian. 

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18 How Can I Share My Story?

Anna was always surprised by how her life story seemed to inspire others. To Anna, her life was just her life, the only life she’d lived. In that sense, her life didn’t really inspire Anna. But she was happy that her life inspired others. As she realized that her life meant something to others, Anna began to think how she might share her story for that purpose, not to brag because she didn’t feel as if she had anything to brag about, but instead simply to encourage others. Anna knew she’d depart her earthly life without leaving anyone a fortune or having solved a great mystery or made a huge discovery. But if she could leave an account of her life that inspired someone, anyone, then maybe that was the legacy that God had planned for her.

Story

The world turns around stories because the world is itself a story, indeed, the revelation of the creator’s grand narrative. We communicate through stories, learn through stories, and remember through stories for the same reason, that the world lays itself out to us as a story. We are made for stories, and we are stories. We cannot think, see, discern, and act without perceiving, pursuing, and participating in stories. Stories inhabit and imbue the world, capturing and influencing us, leading us along, and weaving us into their accounts. The world’s story is one of the creator’s desperate love not just for his creation but particularly and centrally for humankind, including specifically you. Know your own story, as you know the creator’s story for the world. Indeed, weave your story into the creator’s story for the world in the way that the creator knit you together to share and reveal more of his story. Your legacy shines when your story is the one the creator gave you in the world.

Legacies

Legacies are thus more stories than anything else. Oh, sure, legacies can include material gifts, monetary fortunes, sentimental memories, sound values, stirring commitments, and heartening traditions. But more than anything of those things, legacies are narratives or accounts of a life that lift, guide, and inspire, in their resonance with the creator’s own story for the world. Your life story reflects the world’s creation story. You, like the world, are a miracle of creation, with all the potential of a fabulously good world but also all of the pitfalls that come with the world’s chaotic and deadly disorder. You, like the world, will return to dust except as you reach for the creator’s resurrection to his paradise realm beyond. Your story, like the world’s story, is one of the creator’s pursuit of your heart as he reveals his love and grace to you through your experiences. The more your story resonates with the creator’s story for the world, the more your story leaves a rich legacy inspiring your heirs and successors, and others whom your legacy touches and influences. 

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19 How Do I Make Memories?

Jenny realized at her grandfather’s memorial service that she had few recollections of her grandfather. And the few recollections she had were mostly negative. She hadn’t seen her grandfather in years, when he suddenly passed. That distance was partly Jenny’s fault. She knew she’d been busier and less interested in her grandfather than she should have been. But her grandfather hadn’t seemed to care about their distance or about her, either. Jenny never remembered getting a card or call from her grandfather. Mostly, she remembered her grandfather being a pain in her grandmother’s side, although her grandmother clearly adored her grandfather. Jenny’s brothers seemed to have liked her grandfather alright. Maybe, she finally decided, it was because she was a girl and then a young woman, to whom her grandfather just couldn’t relate. 

Memories

Memories are a big part of a legacy. If your family members, friends, and community have few or no memories of you, or only negative memories, you may not have the legacy you’d like. Think of your own parents and grandparents, and the memories you have of them. What is the quality of those memories? Are they good or bad, funny or sad, warm or cold, encouraging or discouraging? You may also have formative memories, where for the first time you understood something about your parents, grandparents, teachers, or other mentors and influential figures in your life. Those memories may continue to silently or subconsciously guide you, making you act and react the way that you do and, to a degree, making you who you are. In the same way, don’t underestimate the role that others’ memories of you play in shaping your own legacy. Your legacy may be in those memories more so than in other things you say and do.

Spontaneity

The best memories may be spontaneous, unplanned, and uninhibited by expectations. Once again, think back across your own experience. You probably have had several surprising things happen to you and around you that fixed the event in your memory. Spontaneity may be a key ingredient to making something memorable. The things that we plan, predict, and expect are not things we need to remember because they fit the cause and effect of which we are a part. We remember things when they divert from the expected path because we want to account for those things in the next event. When those things never do repeat, we then remember them even more as thoroughly distinct, maybe even providential and miraculous. Keep that diversion in mind when thinking of how memories shape your legacy. Your diversion from the expected path may be what most shapes your legacy in the memory of those who see you divert. 

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20 What Should My Memorial Plan Be?

So this was it, Thomas knew. His earthly end was very near, so near that he was conscious of little else. Thomas had to focus on his end. He had no choice. Oddly, he wasn’t upset about it. He knew his destiny lay in the heavenly realm beyond his earthly end. But Thomas also felt that he wanted to make a good end of things on earth. Indeed, Thomas wanted to finish sensitively, clearly, and appropriately, rather than half-heartedly as if in afterthought. To do so, Thomas decided that he should have a say in his memorial plan. And fortunately, his wife and adult children respected his wishes to do so.

Funerals

The American tradition, practiced differently around the world but practiced in some form everywhere, is to inter the body after its demise in some form of funeral service. We call it a funeral or memorial service because a funeral serves. A funeral serves to honor the departed and to comfort the survivors who cared most for the departed. A funeral service may be elaborate or simple. A funeral service may also be traditional in its form and content, or peculiar to the life and story of the departed or the preferences of the survivors. Funeral services play important roles in the family’s transition from loving and caring for, and relying on, the departed to honoring the departed’s memory. Funeral services help family members begin to shift roles and responsibilities to accommodate the departed’s absence. Your legacy can depend in significant part on how your family handles your funeral service, with or without your prior planning, provisioning, and direction. 

Preparation

Obviously, a close family member’s passing can be very hard on the surviving family members. Even if the departed had a long illness with a predictable demise, the actual passing may so disarm and overwhelm close family members as to make handling funeral plans very difficult. How well or poorly your family handles your funeral service can thus in turn depend in significant part on your own planning and preferences. You don’t have to worry about your own funeral. Someone else can and should handle everything, if you don’t wish to do so because doing so would be difficult or unmanageable for you. But helping your spouse, adult children, or others plan your funeral service when you know they would find it difficult to do so can be an especially heartening aspect of your legacy. In short, if you are up to some of the funeral plans and preparations, you may make your own funeral service significantly more meaningful for your surviving family members and your friends and community, and thus strengthen your legacy.

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