Part 4: Preserve
Don’t mistake your legacy as simply being your estate or what you are worth. Your legacy includes your values, beliefs, and the causes important to you. Many things are important to preserve, from planning your estate to contributing to charitable causes important to you.
- A recorded family history - How many financial advisors or attorneys do you know that would include recorded video conversations to preserve your family history? Not many. At Growing Legacies, we believe that who you are is more important than what you have, and we make sure your family benefits from your values and your life for generations to come.
- Estate planning - Through the process of estate planning, we determine how your assets will be preserved, managed, and distributed after you pass or in the event you become incapacitated. The specific estate planning tasks include making a will, setting up trusts, making charitable donations, and naming an executor and beneficiaries.
- Charitable gifting - In simple terms, a charitable donation is a gift of cash or property made to a nonprofit organization to help it accomplish its goals, for which the donor receives nothing of value in return. An added benefit is that taxpayers may deduct charitable contributions from their adjusted gross incomes.
- Special needs planning - Special needs planning involves setting up a trust for the care and financial needs of a disabled child. This ensures that at the time of their deaths the child’s care will be legally transferred to another authority and financial support and inheritance for the child will be provided for in a manner that won’t affect benefits the child may be receiving for care.