Wealth Advisor Veteran Discovers Planning Blind-Spots With leafplanner
Barbara Young uncovers several items needing corrective action while taking proactive steps for future generations.
Summary
Over the years, Barbara Young has seen an evolutionary shift that places more care and attention surrounding estate structure, family values, legacy intentions, and communication. But still not enough focus on a road map for when a transition or succession event actually happens. She realized some preparation work was needed for her own family and turned to leafplanner to learn how she and her family could benefit from a well-structured leafplan.
About the Client
Barbara’s reputation and maven status among private wealth advisors and managers certainly speaks for themselves. She is currently a Consultant & Advisory Board Member with Cresset Capital. Prior to joining Cresset, Barbara was Chief Executive Officer, Chief Investment Officer, and Founding Principal of Cypress Wealth Advisors. Barbara has extensive financial and investment experience working with individuals, families, and foundations. Before founding Cypress Wealth Advisors, she was the founding President and Chief Executive Officer of Springcreek Corporation, a wealth advisory firm that managed investment assets for high-net-worth families.
Objectives
In addition to Barbara’s desire to provide a roadmap–a leafplan–for her family and uncover any blind spots, Barbara was motivated to work with leafplanner to ensure her adult children were equipped with all of the tools and resources they would need not only to start understanding the family’s enterprise structure but also be empowered with the knowledge to make informed decisions and take any necessary actions.
Recognizing the importance of a leafplan that outlines assets, entities, and ownership structures, Barbara set out to include details on everything from locations, custody, and contact info to investment amount, value, and basis to communicate the complete picture of the family enterprise.
“The importance of a detailed and thoughtful road map that outlines assets, entities, ownership structuring, is crucial for those that take over,” said Barbara.
Results: Proactive/Corrective Actions
Even with her extensive financial and investment experience working with individuals, families, and foundations, Barbara quickly saw the value of leafplanner and the contextual advantage it can offer not only HNW families such as her clients but also industry veterans such as herself and her family.
As she was building out her family’s leafplan, she discovered a gap in her estate planning which revealed that one of her homes wasn't titled as she had thought for the past 20 years and was in her and her husband’s names, personally, and not in a trust, where it could have been protected should the asset ever enter into probate. Without going through the leafplanner process, she would never have had this epiphany and had the ability to retitle this asset to a trust agreement. Barbara stated, "The advantage that leafplanner offers over a digital vault or similar is the ability to include as much information as possible of location, custody, contact info, investment amount, and value, while also providing contextual details and insight that might not ordinarily be communicated.”
“The advantage that leafplanner offers over a digital vault or similar is the ability to include as much information as possible of location, custody, contact info, investment amount, and value while also providing contextual details and insight that might not ordinarily be communicated.”
Further, while working on her leafplan and gaining insights from our extensive guides, Barbara also uncovered several more overlooked details that she was able to correct, including:
- lot line adjustments that were not properly recorded
- rollover IRAs that didn't have expected beneficiaries
- private investments that were not uniformly titled in ownership entities
She even discovered a life insurance policy that she thought was defunct that had a six-figure cash value. Had she not committed to the leafplanner process, all of these items would have been left unresolved.
Moving forward, while taking advantage of routine reviews and updates, Barbara’s ever-evolving leafplan will serve as her family’s roadmap to ensure her family is engaged, educated, and empowered for generations to come.
Conclusion
As an advisor herself, Barbara believes that empowering the next generation to have not only a bird's eye view of all family enterprise matters but also the appropriate contacts is a crucial step towards ensuring that no information will be lost during the succession of a family legacy.
“It is a lot of work, but it is so necessary to leave an understandable and complete roadmap for the next generation.”
What makes leafplanner unique is the commitment to the process, says Barbara “It is a lot of work, but it is so necessary to leave an understandable and complete roadmap for the next generation.”
