What does it mean to leave a legacy?
In this month’s Beyond the Headlines, Zach Horn explores how families can build a lasting legacy through more than just wealth. From having meaningful conversations about estate plans to making charitable giving part of a broader strategy, communication and thoughtful planning can help ensure your intentions carry forward.
Zach also shares how the Foster & Motley team is putting legacy into action by volunteering with five Cincinnati-area organizations. Because sometimes, a legacy isn’t just what you leave behind—it’s how you show up today.
Sources
Local Organizations Foster & Motley Volunteered at:
Don't want to watch the video? Here’s the transcript you can read instead:
Hi, I’m Zach Horn, and this is the August edition of Beyond the Headlines.
What makes for a legacy well left? For some it's family, for others it's giving, for others it's simply showing up. Something I enjoy about our work with clients is being a part of the conversations when they are defining the legacy they want to have – now and when they are gone.
Take the wealthiest families in the world as an example. It turns out, they lose most of what they’ve built, and not to bad investments or to taxes, but to silence. A UBS report on ultra-wealthy families found that roughly 70 percent of their wealth is gone by the second generation, and 90 percent by the third.
We see this pattern show up at every level of wealth. Families build something over a lifetime, and then the plan for passing it on lives entirely in a lawyer's file, never spoken out loud. Children find out what their parents planned for assets the same week they're grieving their loss.
As you’re planning your estate on paper, remember to also think about having conversations about it, because communication is what turns a theoretical plan into a real one. A lot of what we do with multigenerational family wealth goes beyond investments, trusts, and estates and involves getting the whole family in a room, sometimes over several meetings. We know that a legacy never talked about isn't really a legacy. It's a surprise with a paper trail.
Legacy also applies to what you give away while you're still here to see it make a difference. U.S. donors gave a record breaking $617 billion in charitable donations last year.
Tax law changes reshaped the incentive to give big, and the families making the most out of that shift are the ones who planned the giving alongside their tax and estate picture, instead of writing a check in December and figuring out the tax consequences in April.
We work with clients throughout the year on coordinated giving, whether through donor-advised funds, qualified charitable distributions, or timing a gift to a year when it moves the tax needle most.
A legacy built through giving doesn't have to wait for a will. Planned well, it's one you get to watch take shape during your lifetime.
If the word legacy feels overwhelming, you can always start smaller, one day at a time. As a firm, we at Foster & Motley believe that legacies can be created by serving our community and showing up for others. This summer we put that value into practice with our team of advisors and staff volunteering with five Cincinnati organizations: Sleep in Heavenly Peace, La Soupe, Stepping Stones, the Cincinnati Tool Bank, and the Ronald McDonald House.
If you want to support any of these organizations with your time or resources, we've included links to each in the description below.
A family conversation, giving strategy, or an afternoon of showing up to help — that's what the start of a legacy actually looks like.
If any of that sounds like something worth talking through, reach out to a Foster & Motley advisor. That's what we're here for.
We’ll see you next month.