The Purposeful Trust: Bringing Life and Meaning to Estate Planning

A wide majority of Americans have no valid will or trust. The word on the street is that the process is “cold” and “impersonal.” Even when clients finally make to the estate planner's office, a shockingly large percentage of tax-sophisticated estate planning documents are prepared and paid for, but are never executed. “This just does not express what I want to communicate to those we leave behind,” one client lamented as she refused to sign.

“Sterile Legalese”
When the documents are eventually signed, they are often viewed as endless pages of sterile legalese. One frustrated client, upon reviewing the stack of papers for which he had paid tens of thousands of dollars, observed: “If someone were to rip off the first and last pages of my will or trust, could anyone even tell that it belonged to me?”
Most estate planning documents, even those written in a plain English format, do very little to convey the real human caring and concerns of the clients for whom they are written. Lost somewhere in even the most carefully drafted documents is the love parents and grandparents feel for their children and grandchildren, the faith they have in their descendants' potential to grow and develop, and the hope they hold for the future.

Long-term Impact
Sadly, many wills and trusts have a damaging and corrosive impact when they are read to the survivors and then implemented. They spawn litigation, rupture family harmony, and sever relationships. Initiative and industry are snuffed out, replaced by “affluenza” or an attitude of entitlement or victimhood or irresponsibility.
Children, grandchildren, and charities, whose lives are often governed by these cold, impersonal, and sterile documents, grow rebellious or resentful. In time, grandparents are remembered not as helpful and caring but as “grandmonsters” whose icy hands seek to rule from the grave.

Second page: Questions

The Wrong Questions Yield the Wrong Answers
We in the planning professions are largely to blame for the impersonal nature and the ultimate human failure of the process. Too often our client conversations start, end, and are centered on the subjects of parental control, tax benefits, and asset protection. When we ask the wrong questions, we almost always end up with the wrong answers. The questions we have been asking ourselves and our clients about reducing taxes, avoiding probate, and dividing up assets have clearly not produced desirable results.

Perhaps we need to start asking ourselves a different set of questions. Questions like:

* What would have to change so that clients would leave the estate planner's office energized, engaged, and optimistic, rather than frustrated, disillusioned, and confused?

* What are the likely real-world outcomes of the plans we create in the lives of our clients' loved ones, and do those outcomes match our clients' purposes, hopes, and dreams for those they care about most?

* Is there a way to think afresh about the meaning and purposes of trusts and estate planning, a way that continues to honor the legal roles and relationships yet also transforms the end result into something generative, inspiring, and connective?

    * How can we construct wills and trusts so that both grantors and beneficiaries can be experienced within the documents as real, living, caring, intelligent human beings rather than as objects or infants?

It Starts with a Purposeful ConversationTM
Given an opportunity, most clients are interested in deeper conversations around the impact of what their wealth is going to do to their children, their grandchildren, and their favorite causes. They are interested in discussing the “How much is enough?” and “How much is too much?” questions. They want to know if there is a way they can pass on more than money. They want what they leave to be a blessing to those they love and not a crippling handicap.

As professionals, we must learn how to ask our clients the right questions and then sit back and listen attentively, generously, and generatively. We must acknowledge that, notwithstanding our professional expertise, they are the experts on the subject of their lives, their purposes, and their vision for themselves and those they love. Without access to their expertise, all of ours is nearly always wasted and misdirected. The quality of our attention and the quality of our questions can produce brilliant thinking in our clients.

The SunBridge Purposeful Conversations (younger siblings in the Priceless Conversation family) provide the questions and the process for helping our clients think clearly and then share openly their answers to the significant issues underlying their most important estate planning decisions. The experience is simple, enjoyable, and very gratifying.

It Continues With Their Words
From their answers, we can discern the real purposes behind their planning and we can glean the words to express their purposes, hopes, and dreams to trustees and beneficiaries. The clients' own words and stories are also the best source for the name of the trust, for the lesson and wisdom that should inform trust decision, and for the bedrock principles that should guide the trust through uncharted waters. With their words and their stories in hand, we're prepared to start creating Purposeful Trusts.
In the development of this Purposeful Trust Planning approach, we have uncovered Seven Secrets that help drive the work to a satisfying and successful conclusion. Each secret is valuable standing alone, but it's clearly a case of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. When they work together as a system, they create synergistic energy.

Third Page: Seven Secrets

The Seven Secrets of Purposeful Trust Planning
Here are the seven keys that open the door to a beautiful and meaningful new world of planning for us and our clients.

    Secret #1: Focus—The estate planning process is robust and engaging when it focuses primarily on the clients' deepest hopes, dreams, and purposes.

    Secret #2: Purpose—The trust itself is infused with life and energy when the clients' own words are used to express the rich human purposes of the trust.

    Secret # 3: Name—The clients' name for the trust can be a succinct and powerful expression of their fondest hopes and dreams for the trust and its beneficiaries.

    Secret #4: Guidance—Directions based on the clients' wisdom and life-lessons and written in the clients' own words can guide the trust to achieve its grandest purposes.

    Secret #5: Heirlooms—When a gift of tangible personal property includes the clients' story and the item's background, it turns an object into a priceless treasure.

    Secret #6: Gratitude—Expressions of appreciation and an attitude of gratitude in givers and receivers can turn transfers into gifts and financial riches into true wealth.

    Secret #7: Principles—Statements of the clients' guiding bedrock principles can provide pole star and compass in navigating the trust through an unpredictable future.

The Purposeful Trust—The Trust with a Personality and a Voice

Applying the Seven Secrets in The Purposeful Trust Planning Process produces an experience that is richer and more satisfying—compared to the typical estate planning experience—for both the client and the planning team. The result of the planning team working collaboratively with the clients to ascertain and articulate their deepest purposes and then create an estate plan that honors both grantors and beneficiaries and respects their bedrock principles and values is a much more powerful, expressive, and meaningful plan and set of documents.

The clients come alive as they realize they can express their deepest concerns and fondest dreams both in the design of their plan and in the creation of the documents. They very often weep for joy at the signing ceremony, for they sense the difference their Purposeful Trust Planning will make with the people and causes they cherish.

Through the grantors' expressions in the documents themselves, children, grandchildren, and other beneficiaries feel that the grantors understand them and want the best for them. They appreciate the Purposeful Gifts they have received, including financial bequests, priceless heirloom objects, and life-lessons and wisdom handed down from generation to generation. As a result, they have more gratitude and greater purpose in their own lives.

Purposeful Trust Planning—Innovative, Revolutionary, and Rewarding
Purposeful Trust Planning is innovative, revolutionary and rewarding. Purposeful Trusts can be used across the spectrum of wealth from abundance to ultra affluence. I firmly believe that The Purposeful Trust is about to trigger a revolution that will completely transform our practices and the clients we serve. It not only can increase client satisfaction significantly but it can be richly rewarding (and not just in a financial sense) to both the client and the advisory team.

Welcome to the future of estate planning!

Scott Farnsworth, President, Sunbridge
www.sunbridgelegacy.com
Phone number: 407-593-2386
sunbridge@cfl.rr.com