Legacy & Estate Planning
Legacy & Estate Planning Questions Sound Like…
- Do my kids actually know where everything is if something happens to me?
- Is my trust funded — or just drafted and sitting in a drawer?
- Should we set up charitable giving now, or leave it in the will?
- Will my spouse be okay financially if I go first?
- What do I want my money — and my values — to do after I'm gone?
Legacy Is About Clarity, Not Death
For most families, the hardest part of losing a parent isn't the grief. It's the chaos that follows — the missing passwords, the wrong beneficiary on a 30-year-old IRA, the trust that was drafted but never funded, the kids who didn't know where the will was kept.
A real legacy plan isn't about death. It's about making sure the people you love don't have to figure it all out alone, on the worst week of their life.
We help you put it in writing while you still have the time, the energy, and the clarity to do it right. Our business is built on a foundation of thoughtful client relationships
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It's About the Family You Leave, Not the Forms You File
Most estate planning stops at the document. A will gets drafted, a trust gets signed, copies go in a drawer — and everyone assumes the work is done. It isn't.
The hard part starts where most plans end: in the conversations. Who will make medical decisions? Who's the executor, and do they know it? Are the kids being treated equally — or fairly, which isn't always the same thing? What happens to the family business, the cabin, the heirloom that two siblings both want?
We sit with you through those questions, in plain English, without judgment. Because the families who navigate inheritance well aren't the ones with the most expensive documents. They're the ones who had the conversations early — while the parents were still in the room to lead them.
Estate planning has technical pieces and human pieces. We do both.
The areas where we work with you:
Wills, trusts, and powers of attorney — coordinated with local estate attorneys, or through advisor-built platforms like EncorEstate Plans or attorneys for clients who want a streamlined approach.
- Trust funding — making sure the assets actually live inside the trust, not just on paper
- Beneficiary review — the most overlooked document in most retirements; we audit every account, every year
- Charitable giving strategy — Qualified Charitable Distributions, Donor-Advised Funds, gifts of appreciated stock, and timing it all for maximum tax efficiency
- Inherited IRA planning — the post-SECURE Act 10-year rule changed everything; most heirs don't know it yet.
- Family meetings — facilitated conversations between you, your spouse, and your adult children, so nothing is a surprise later
Where Your Legacy Can Go
Your legacy isn't just a number on an estate document. It's a set of decisions about where your life's work lands. The people you love — spouse, children, grandchildren, in the right amounts and at the right time The causes you care about — charity, faith communities, your alma mater, with tax efficiency built in
The next generation's launching pad — education funding, first-home help, business seed money.
The story you leave behind — values, letters, recorded conversations, the things that matter more than the money. Deciding ahead of time where you'd like your legacy to go is the first step to making sure it gets there. Most families never have these conversations — and pay for it later in confusion and conflict. We help you have them now, while they're still your decisions to make.