Welcome to The Heritage Institute Resource Library
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How Prepared is Your Practice for the Great Wealth Transfer?
This assessment is designed to help you evaluate your current approach to multigenerational planning and identify opportunities to strengthen client relationships, deepen family engagement, and better serve the families who entrust you with their future.
There is a huge shift taking place in the planning world…
and it presents a myriad of opportunities and challenges for planning professionals. Are you ready?
Preparing the Family for the Great Wealth Transfer
Most inheritance plans ultimately fail because the inheritors are not prepared for the responsibilities that come with their emotional and financial inheritances. The most technically complex, artfully crafted Family Governance structures in the world will not keep the family and its fortune together or help the family to achieve their vision over time.
Beneficiary Well-Being Awareness Inspired by Delaware’s Section 3325
In 2024, Delaware’s innovative legal framework for trusts was expanded under the Delaware Trust Act to introduce a specific focus on beneficiary ‘well-being.’ Section 3325 of this Act outlines principles for Beneficiary Well-Being Trusts…
Elevating Beneficiary Well-Being in a New Era of Trust Planning
For decades, estate planning has been dominated by a singular obsession: minimizing tax burdens. The Trusts that were used for this planning were focused on the investment and distribution of the remaining estate. This "distribution-focused" approach, born in the shadow of rising estate taxes, turned trusts into tools for transferring wealth with as little loss to the IRS as possible. But the tide is turning.
Successful Multigenerational Planning
The difference between the 90% of families who fail and the 10% who successfully keep their family and wealth together for multiple generations is that successful families add a 3rd ‘component’ to the traditional disciplines of financial and estate planning.
Sustaining Family Wealth & Unity Across Generations
Our work, plus contemporary studies and the cumulative experience of professional advisors, provided the answer: families who remain strong and unified across generations share many specific ‘elements of success’ in common, including how they intentionally teach and transmit those elements to succeeding generations.
The Lead Advisor
In my experience working with very wealthy clients for two decades, I have identified two truths about the dynamics of their advisor relationships: (a) most affluent families actually do work with someone whom they regard as a “Lead Advisor,” and (b) those families who don’t have a Lead Advisor desperately need one.
Transformational Philanthropy
“Transformational philanthropy” may be a new term to some of you. Here is an easy way to understand the concept: imagine a gift that has as profound an impact on the donor who makes it (and often their family) as it does on the organization receiving the gift. That is the essence of transformational philanthropy. In this paper, we will examine the "natural" bene fits that accrue to professionals and charitable organizations that help the families with whom they work remain together. In short, we will look at how to create multi-generational, transformational philanthropy, which results in multi-generational philanthropists and donors.
Person of Influence Activity
This activity provides parents and grandparents with a wonderful opportunity to help children to understand the lasting impact that individuals can have on their lives. Do the activity yourself, and then share with the children.
The purpose of this article is to explain and illustrate how re-framing your role, deliverables, and compensation can dramatically enhance your client relationships, while significantly differentiating your business.
The Effective 6-Step Stressed Client Call
During times of crisis, some advisors lose clients, and other advisors gain clients. Those who were being proactive, calling and listening gain clients. Those who do not take the opportunity to build relationships and merely provide data and analysis to their clients lose clients.
First, Be Intentional
In this article by Heritage Institute CEO Rod Zeeb, the role of intentionality in achieving success is examined, and practical steps for becoming more intentional are explained.
Collaboration
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to highlight the benefits that high-level collaboration delivers to both the client and the advisor, and second, to identify and offer concrete solutions for the three primary issues that prevent advisors from collaborating together effectively.
Trust
Everything we do in our personal, professional, and community lives depends to some degree on the value of trust. This article considers the many roles that trust plays in life.
