Legacy planning is about more than passing on an inheritance to your loved ones. With legacy planning, you can share your views in about many aspects of life and help future generations of your family learn from your experiences.
Estate planning and legacy planning are different, but at the same time, they’re not. Legacy planning can be a part of the estate planning process and heighten the experience.
With legacy planning, you are able to put together your estate plan as well as legacy plans that will contain important pieces of information such as:
- Your memories
- Personal values that you’d like to pass on
- Life lessons
- Your final wishes for your family, friends, colleagues and others
The nice thing about legacy planning is that it aligns well with your estate plan. Your estate plan dictates what happens with inheritances, trusts and other assets, but your legacy plan helps you give others more insight into who you were and why you chose to put together an estate plan in the way you did.
Your estate plan is more meaningful with a legacy plan put in place
Your estate plan can be built up into a legal document that not only provides guidance but also reflects your values. Legacy planning, during your lifetime, may help you decide how to act on priorities in your life or how to use valuable resources to better help your family and friends.
Legacy planning gives you an opportunity to look over your life and all it means to you so that you can go into your estate plan with a clear idea of how you’d like to proceed.
If preventing disputes, providing pet care information, providing words of wisdom and otherwise connecting with your beneficiaries and those you’ve left behind is important to you, you should know that legacy planning will allow you to reach them with your words and thoughts. There are 38 vital documents that you’ll go over during the legacy planning process so that your estate will be in order and you’ll be able to move forward knowing that your legacy is protected.