Review of: Family Wealth – Estate Planning for the Healthy Wealthy Family

Estate Planning for the Healthy, Wealthy Family

Estate Planning for the Healthy Wealthy Family – How to Promote Family Harmony, Affirm Your Values, and Protect your Assets By Stanley D. Neeleman, J.D. Carla B. Garrity, PH.D and Mitchell A. Baris, PH.D. Copyright 2003, published by Allworth Press.

Summary
Have you gone through the motions of drawing up a will, creating a revokable living trust, establishing powers of attorney and other estate planning tasks, but still feel that something is missing?

If so, then this book may be for you. It is a fairly easy read divided into three main parts: 1) information and discussion about money, values, happiness and modeling your family values to your children; 2) basic and advanced estate planning terms and tools and 3) dangers involved in asset transfer.

The combined talents of a lawyer (Stanley Neeleman), a child psychologist (Carla Garrity) and a psychologist (Mitchell Baris), allow the authors to lead the reader from a general discussion on value identification through understanding estate plan objectives derived from those values to understanding how money relates to values, self-concept and enjoyment. They then move on to showing parents how to build and model those values to their children, providing specific learning goals for multiple age groups – all the way from birth through early adulthood (age 29). Also included is a discussion of how money can affect the balance of power in a marriage and ways to deal with the negative impacts.

With that background, and still keeping their focus firmly on letting values drive the estate planning, the authors present basic and advanced estate planning terms and techniques, including information on testamentary dispositions, transfer tax deferral and avoidance, power of attorney, living wills and advance funeral arrangements. Advanced methods of saving taxes such as shelter trusts; 529 plans for education; life insurance, charitable remainder and charitable lead trusts; Qualified Personal Residence Trusts and Family Limited Companions are also described. They even provide some information on building and protecting your estate before you die – how to save, increase your income and types of insurance to consider.

Finally, the authors list and describe various dangers that can reduce or destroy your estate. They highlight the impacts of divorce, the considerations needed for step children, some of the causes for sibling rivalry in estate transfers along with ways to address passing personal effects and household property (which can cause more squabbles than the money does). Along the way, they address the lack of trust that can exist between parents and children, sometimes resulting in parents wanting to control the estate ‘from beyond the grave’. They finish up by advising the reader on how to talk to parents about their estate plans; how to select estate planning advisors, and how to evaluate your child’s readiness for money (and ways to get them ready).

Read this book to understand and address:

• What values based estate planning is.
• How to clarify and prioritize your values.
• The role (positive and negative) that money can play in a family.
• Things to do to build values in your children – which ones you should do yourself as opposed to hiring someone.
• Age specific goals to teach your child or young adult about values and money.
• High level estate planning terms and tools.
• Growing and protecting your assets before you die.
• Methods and tools to defer or avoid transfer taxes – including use of trusts to promote values.

What I liked:

• Specific suggestions on questions to ask yourself to help clarify your values.
• Examples of how the American culture transmits money myths to our children and to us.
• Ideas to help parents subvert greed in their children – such as ‘Teach your child to recognize marketing ploys’.
• Inclusion of age group 23 – 29 (young adulthood) in the section on training about money.
• The list of advantages in gifting through trusts.
• The suggestion to deal with different needs of your children without causing rivalry by dividing up 80% of the estate equally between them, then establishing a trust with the other 20% to be used for any emergency needs of any of them.

What I wished for:

• More details on the actual estate planning methods and tools – such as limited partnerships, homestead exemptions and etc for asset protection.
• More information on transferring a family business.

Favorite quotes:
“The exercise of money’s purchasing power entails….a loss of promising power”p17.

“Joy is a consequence of the pursuit of meaningful ends.” p 78.

“Families do not just generate and disperse wealth; they perpetuate values and skills, and model them for future generations to live meaningful and contributory lives.” p 31.

“Money is power, and the key issue to resolve in marriage is power balance”p 53.

“The biggest pitfall for stepfamilies is when one parent expects instantaneous complete acceptance of his or her children by the new spouse” p 133.

“Children need to be taught that siblings are lifelong companions who can offer family support to the individual long after the parents have died”. P 137.