Family Wealth Secrets Online Magazine

What Is Family Wealth Planning?

Family Wealth Planning is the Web 2.0 version of estate planning.

Whereas “estate planning” is about preparing and passing on your financial assets at the end of your life, Family Wealth Planning is about making the right financial and legal decisions for your whole family wealth throughout your lifetime and leaving the world a better place after you are gone.

It’s about capturing the assets that are most often lost when someone dies … the intellectual, spiritual and human assets that make up a great majority of our family’s wealth and passing them on as well.

When my dad died, he left behind a bit of money, but the rest of his wealth was lost, uncaptured.

I have no letters from him or recordings talking about his hopes and dreams for my future.  My children will never hear his voice or know what was important to him.

I suspect it is the same for your family.

And while there are gobs of websites and businesses springing up to help people capture these assets and pass them on, in my experience we are just too busy and it rarely gets done.

I’ve found the best way to make sure this happens is to make it part of your legal planning.  When you are working with a lawyer on your family’s “estate” planning, if your lawyer is only preparing a plan to pass on your financial assets, he or she is only doing 1/4 of the job.

What you want is a lawyer who will help you capture the wealth that is most often lost and most difficult to plan for … your intellectual, spiritual and human assets or who you are and what’s important to you.

Through a simple Family Wealth Legacy Interview process at the end of your planning together, your Personal Family Lawyer will help you capture the most valuable family wealth you have and pass that on for successive generations by building a legacy library that will be far more valuable than any dollars you could ever leave behind.