How the Legacy Logix Journey Began
More than 20 years ago my parents asked me to be the trustee (executor) for their Estate. Of course I said yes. In reality, I had no notion of what I was saying yes to, or signing up for.
In 2019 my father passed, and I became a co-trustee of their Estate with my mom. In 2020 my mom passed. I became the primary trustee and began the process of ‘settling their Estate’.
And hundreds of hours later… I can say that this has been a journey of discovery. Not just discovering what it means to settle an Estate, but also working through information about the Estate that took too much time to find, and/or fix.
I would come to learn that I’m not alone - everyone who has settled an Estate has their own story. When talking to friends and colleagues, each and every one that had either settled an Estate or watched someone else do it complained about a similar experience to my own. Interestingly, nobody had an easy time of it.
As I worked through the process of settling my parents’ Estate, I began to see that there were things my parents could have done that would have made this much easier for me. Had I known then what I know now, I would have worked with my dad on a few items that would have saved me a tremendous amount of time and effort. As a product person, this of course got me curious.
I started speaking with Estate lawyers and heard the same story over and over again. It goes something like this:
“Our job is to create the Estate Plan. Our law firm also provides a document that explains what the Estate holders should do to keep their Estate plan up to date. And invariably, they put this ‘How to manage your Estate plan’ document along with their Estate plan in their safe - and rarely look at it again. Then years later, after they have passed, their kids (beneficiaries) working to settle their Estate come to us and tell us that there are problems. And we explain that we told their parents how to ‘maintain’ their Estate, and that although we could help, it was their responsibility. The beneficiaries are frustrated and ask for help fixing things, and then they get frustrated a second time when we ask to get paid for our time.”
What I learned is that there are 4 primary things people can do to ‘maintain’ an Estate plan once it is created:
Go back to your lawyer and review your Estate plan when there are important changes in your life that could require an update to key documents like your living/revocable trust.
Make sure all assets are properly titled. What this means is that brokerage accounts, property, etc, need to be held in the name of your trust. People often fail to do this, especially for assets that are acquired years after the Estate plan is established.
Make sure you have a complete and updated inventory of your assets. Making your executor find all of your assets (properties, accounts, vehicles, insurance policies, etc.) can create short term pain in terms of time, and long term pain if assets are missed.
Organize all this information and make it available to the people who will need to settle your Estate.
We interviewed over 70 people with Estate plans, and learned that 95% of them are not doing the steps above, even though they are aware that they should. And the single reason given is “it is just too time consuming”.
So Legacy Logix was born, with a focus on helping Estate holders maintain their Estate without the manual effort required of them today.
Legacy Logix is designed to be an easy to use service that takes the responsibility of understanding your Estate, and then helps you proactively monitor it for needed updates or critical missing pieces. It’s as easy to deal with as having your accountant do your taxes. You share key documents (just like sharing key documents with your accountant) and in the background, Legacy Logix figures out how to keep your Estate plan organized, complete and up to date. Legacy Logix also acts as the critical shared repository with your family so that they can get access to your Estate portfolio (plan, assets, etc.) when they need to.
I’ll never get my hundreds of ‘settlement-nightmare’ hours back. But I’m gladly dedicating thousands more to eliminate that pain for others.
If you have questions about the company, strategy, journey, etc., feel free to reach out to me at davids@legacylogix.com.
