Congratulations. You are 18. Here is a Check for $250,000

The way we die impacts our legacy.
Planning a wise legacy must take into account many factors. The most commonly overlooked is the prospect of an expanded estate due to the way a person transitions from this life to eternity. If death occurs because of someone else's carelessness, your family may receive an unexpected benefit as a result of the death in a wrongful death compensation payment. I have had clients die on public airline crashes, from a pharmacist incorrectly setting dosage on a prescription and in an automobile accident caused by a drunk driver.

In all of these circumstances, there was a much larger amount in the estate to administer than the deceased could have anticipated. Therefore the way we die makes a very large impact on our Legacy, and should have a calculated impact on our planning. When you sit with your attorney regarding the drafting of your documents, be sure to address the issue of an unanticipated expansion of the estate.

This Lady Would Never Have Dreamed Of This Result, and So Her Sons Suffered. Imagine an average income person going to an attorney for a simple will because she knows she needs something in place. She looks in the paper and finds the cheapest offer. Her estate is totaled at about $60,000 with her equity in the family home, her small 401K, and a company sponsored life insurance policy. She thinks it through and decides to give her husband half, and her two children the other half. After funeral expenses she is expecting to settle some $55,000. This person dies in an airplane accident going home to visit her infirmed mother, and receives into her estate a settlement payment of $1,000,000 from the air carrier's insurance company. Now look at the language in her documents in light of this new, and unexpected result: "I direct that my estate be divided into two portions, with one half going to my husband, and one half held in trust until my children are 18 , and then give each child their respective share to go to college or buy a home." Do you suppose that a $250,000 payment given to you when you turn 18 will have any impact on what you do for the next few years? Do you suppose she ever conceived of a situation that could have delivered this much money to her teen age sons? In summary, when we die, we will die in terms of our relationship to others in one of three positions. Most attorneys have not had many deaths in their client group, and therefore the planning done does not always address this important fact. You would be wise in your planning with your attorney to explore the impact of each of these three scenarios:

1. I die in an accident or of "natural causes" in such a way that no one is adversely impacted financially or personally by the nature of the way I die.
2. I die in an accident that is my fault, and someone else is injured or dies as a result of the way I die or there is property damage.
3. I die as the result of an accident of some type that is not my fault, but someone else is held to be liable, and therefore a wrongful death settlement of some amount will be added to my estate.

Planning a Wise Legacy Requires Thinking Through the Impact of Different Scenarios. Adapted from My Great Legacy Tutorial, Donald Clark, Chrysalis Consulting, Inc.

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