Client Story – How Legacy Estate Planning Became Paramount

Driving down the 405 in bumper to bumper traffic, Mary felt John’s anger rising. Mary had taken their financial advisor’s advice about visiting an attorney to update their estate plan. And John wasn’t pleased.

As they crawled their way to the attorney’s office, John’s mind swirled. “Why does this have to take so much time…and I bet money too?” he wondered. “Why can’t I just sign a piece of paper that says, ‘give everything I have to my wife and my daughters?’”

After a car swerved into their lane, forcing John to slam on the brakes, he exploded at his wife, “Honestly, I’d rather be doing something else today – like working! What’s wrong with our estate plan? It’s all for you and our girls, right?”

Understanding her husband’s irritation, Mary tried to placate her husband – “Honey, I’d rather be sipping a glass of Chardonnay lazing in the sun. But we’ve worked too hard NOT to get this right.”

“Besides,” she added. “We’re no spring chickens! You’re a 64-year old rich guy. We can’t delay your estate planning for another decade!”

The good news for John and Mary was that they were in a good position financially.

They’d purchased their house 30 years ago for $600,000, and seen its value skyrocket to $2.5M. They’d also achieved their ambition to fly business class on holidays abroad a long time ago. And John could have retired in his 50s.

In other words, they had more money than they could spend.

Their problem wasn’t money. But how to manage their money without tearing the family apart.

John and Mary had close relationships with their daughters Jenny and Kathy. Both of their daughters were in their early 30’s, married and lived 15 minutes from their parents.

But up until that point, John and Mary had helped their daughters live well above their means. Both daughters lived in pricey homes everyone on the street wondered how they could afford.

Jenny and Kathy’s excessive spending also left John and Mary unsettled. They wondered if their daughters’ extravagant lifestyles and lack of saving was a generational thing, or because they were counting on a generous inheritance as their retirement plan?

As John and Mary pulled up to the attorney’s office, John had a jarring flashback to the last time he was dealing with this stuff.

John had been given the responsibility of being Dad’s trustee. A much heavier responsibility than he’d expected.

Sure, there had been roadblocks and annoyances – like when John had to go to court to make sure certain assets would be considered part of Dad’s trust. But more alarmingly, John’s role as trustee had REALLY rubbed his younger brother, Larry, the wrong way.

It had caused a rupture in their relationship, which was one of the great sorrows of John’s life. Larry had really meant it when he’d stormed out of the house after calling John “a pompous ass that Mom and Dad would be ashamed of!”

“Oh God,” John said to Mary. “What if what happened between Larry and me happens to our daughters! What if fighting over money also pushes them apart?!”

As they sat down in their attorney’s office, John was lost in thought mulling over his decision to appoint Jenny as the trustee.

But suddenly, the solution came to John in a flash, like the inspiration to play a beautiful new riff on his acoustic guitar.

John grabbed Mary’s shoulder, looked his wife straight in the eyes, and said “Honey! I just want the girls to know that we love them, we have been doing it all for them. All we want is for them to treat the inheritance with the same care that we built it with and to get along!“