Wealth is what you leave. Legacy is what it means.
The documents are the easy part. A good attorney can draft the trust and the will in a matter of weeks. The harder question is whether the people you are leaving it to are ready for it. It can determine whether what you built keeps going long after you are gone.
A legacy is more than a number on a statement.
Most people come to us with the money side already half handled. They have a will somewhere, maybe a trust their attorney set up, a rough idea of who gets what. What they have usually not thought through is the rest of it. How the wealth is meant to be used. Whether their kids know how to handle it. What they want their name to mean three generations from now.
That is the part we work on with you. To make sure the plan behind those documents reflects what you actually want. We coordinate the tax, the estate structure, and the giving so they point in the same direction.
Anyone can leave money behind. A legacy is what happens when you decide what that money is for.
Four parts of a plan that lasts.
Which of these you need depends on your family and what you have built. Most plans use some combination of the four.
Family Trusts
Structuring assets so they pass efficiently and stay protected across generations, without handing the next one more than they are ready to manage all at once. Drafted by your attorney, built around the plan we design together.
Business Succession
If your wealth is tied up in a company, the handoff is its own project. We help line up the financial side of the transition so the value you built does not get lost in the change, and coordinate it with your exit plan.
Family Governance
The unglamorous, important work of getting a family on the same page about money before it is inherited rather than after. Sometimes that starts with something as simple as a family meeting.
Charitable Legacy
For many families, giving is the clearest expression of what they stand for. We build charitable strategies into the plan so your values are part of what you pass on, not an afterthought.
The hardest thing to pass down isn't money.
There are a handful of studies that note 70% of wealth is lost by the second generation. 90% is lost by the third. It usually is not for lack of a good trust. It is because the money arrived faster than the readiness to handle it.
The families who beat that pattern tend to have one thing in common. They talk. The kids know roughly what is coming and what it is for. The values got passed down along with the assets. That does not happen by accident, and it is a lot of what we help with, in coordination with your tax and legal advisors.
A trust can protect the money. Only a family that talks about it can make the money last.
A family, planning for families.
We are a family business ourselves. Jim built the firm, and he works alongside his son Andrew and his son-in-law Jake. So when we sit down to talk about handing something to the next generation, it is not an abstraction to us. It is the thing we are living.
That shapes how we work. We start with your family and what you want for it, then build the plan around that, and revisit it as your family, your assets, and the tax law all change over the years. It is fiduciary work, and it is personal, because for us it always has been.
See where things stand in about a minute.
Does your plan still reflect what you want for your family, and does it protect what you have built? Complete our Financial Assessment for an honest read on where you stand.
Legacy planning, answered.
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What is the difference between estate planning and legacy planning?
Estate planning is the legal machinery that moves your assets, the wills, trusts, and beneficiary designations your attorney drafts. Legacy planning is the bigger question of what that wealth is meant to do and whether the people receiving it are ready. One handles the transfer. The other decides whether the transfer does any good.
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When should I start legacy planning?
Once you have meaningful assets or a family to consider, it is worth starting. Early planning gives you more flexibility on taxes and, more importantly, more time to prepare the next generation, which is the part that actually takes years.
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I already have a will and a trust. Do I need this?
Those documents are the foundation, but they are not the whole plan. We review what you have alongside your attorney to be sure it still fits your family and the current tax law, then work on the parts documents do not cover, like how the next generation is prepared for what they inherit.
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Do you write wills and trusts?
No. Those are legal documents, and your attorney drafts them. We build the financial plan behind them and coordinate closely with your attorney and accountant so the documents and the money actually work together.
Let's talk about what you want to leave behind.
It usually starts with a conversation about your family and what you hope the wealth does for them. From there we build the plan. Based in West Chester, working with families across Chester County.
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