Legacy Planning

The Legacy Planning Process

The Introductory Meeting, Review and Planning Analysis

We begin the relationship by getting to know our client another to understand their unique goals, family situation, and planning needs. We will ask our client to provide us with the information we need to understand their existing business structures, legal plans, financials, family information, and any existing marital agreements.

We then closely analyze and evaluate our client’s unique current situation. We work with our client’s existing professional team of advisors to ensure a team concept with family, business, community, and philanthropic integration. At the end of our review period, we present our client with a planning analysis and one to three suggested plans of action, incorporating sophisticated estate planning techniques.

Implementation Engagement of your Legacy Plan

If we find we can improve our client’s current situation, we will accept an Implementation Engagement at our client’s request. We will continue to work with our client and their team of advisors to fine tune and implement one or more estate planning strategies. Some legal strategies include the use of irrevocable trusts, often created outside of California, such as Nevada. A plan may also incorporate the use of limited liability companies for enhanced protection. The Legacy Plan often also requires retitling of assets and additional tax work. We help our clients make this process as smooth as possible by collaborating with their CPA and other advisors.

Family Meeting

If appropriate, we encourage a family meeting to discuss our client’s estate plan and Legacy Plan. The idea of a Family Meeting is to assist families successfully transition wealth from one generation to the next. Statistically, worldwide, there is a 70% failure rate of transferring wealth between generations, and one of the leading causes of this failure is a lack of communication between familial generations. By engaging in a Family Meeting, and possibly subsequent ones, we hope to help our client’s family become a success story. At our first meeting, we plan on discussing the family’s estate plan structure, exploring the roles of the family as they pertain to the estate plan structure, as well as engaging in dialogue regarding the family’s view of their holistic wealth. Additional meetings may be scheduled, and the family’s other advisors maybe brought in from time to time to enhance the family meeting as appropriate.

Our Client Care Program: Maintenance of your Legacy Plan

When we design our client’s estate plan, it will reflect what is most important to our client’s family, life, and business at the time the plan is designed. Over time, our client’s family’s make-up, assets, and priorities will expand, evolve, and shift, and our client’s Legacy Plan needs to reflect those changes, as well as changes in the law. We created our Client Care Program to assist our clients in maintaining the Legacy Plan they have implemented. Our Client Care Program can be custom tailored to our client’s planning needs. For an annual payment, this membership provides our clients with direct access to our team to answer their phone call and email questions, as well as the questions of our client’s team of advisors, as they pertain to the Legacy Plan, as well as an annual review meeting of the client’s Legacy Plan. The open communication encouraged by the Client Care Program creates trusting, long-term relationships between Anderson Law Group and our clients, and leads to our client’s optimal peace of mind.