Heirs and Inheritances

The earth is the LORD’s, and all it contains, The world, and all those who dwell in it.

-Psalm 24:1

Strategic Planning

Heirs and Inheritances

These articles speak to the important things in life as you consider inheritance issues and face life challenges.

  • Building A Strong Family Tree When wealthy clients are asked what they want most for their children and grandchildren, the answer is always the same: they want their children and grandchildren to be happy. Nothing is more gratifying than watching children grow up to be happy, useful, and productive members of society. Likewise, nothing is more heartbreaking than to see them grow up to be miserable, useless, and unproductive.
  • Conducting an Inheritance Fire Drill It is time well spent for parents, as they contemplate the amount and timing of their heirs’ inheritance, to conduct an “inheritance fire drill”. This exercise can help determine how prepared their heirs are to receive an inheritance, and how well they have thought-out how much of an inheritance is appropriate and when it is best to give it to them.
  • Don’t Forget Who You Belong To Do you remember Joseph who, by God’s providence, climbed from being a lowly slave to second-in-command in Potiphar’s house? Life was as good as it could get for Joseph—except for Potiphar’s wife, who wanted Joseph for herself. When she pursued him, Joseph rejected her advances. What caused him to flee the temptation was his awareness of who he belonged to. Remembering this is so critical to living a successful life of stewardship.
  • Preparing Your Heirs for Their Inheritance One of the greatest struggles that wealthy parents seem to have is, “How can we effectively pass our wealth on to our heirs without ruining them?” The fact is that an ill-planned inheritance can actually ruin the very ones you love the most.
  • Inheritances: Oh, What to Do? Of all the issues that affluent parents face in planning, none consumes more time and emotional energy than that of inheritances—and for good reason. There is no area of planning that could be more devastating to a family than an ill-conceived or ill-timed inheritance. I have yet to see an inheritance plan with which parents were entirely satisfied when the actual distributions were clearly outlined for them.
  • Successful Wealth Transfer If wealthy families are going to successfully preserve an appropriate amount of their wealth in the family for future generations to enjoy and use for good, they must do more than simply implement financial techniques and strategies. This traditional approach to planning guarantees nothing except a 90% failure rate.
  • When You Give, You Will Take Away The statement, “When you give, you will take away” is an intriguing maxim. If you give food to someone, you will take away their hunger. If you give work to a man, you will take away his feeling of uselessness. In the giving, there is always something gained and something lost. What makes this statement anything but simple, however, is that once you go beyond “life essentials,” it is often a considerable challenge to be sure that what you give is good and what you take away is bad.