5 lessons for creating a lasting family legacy

Explore strategies to help preserve wealth, strengthen family relationships, and prepare future generations

Key takeaways

• Family legacy planning is an ongoing process that should evolve as family circumstances and laws change.
• Proper asset titling, gifting strategies, and succession planning can help improve wealth transfer outcomes and potentially enhance tax efficiency.
• Estate plans, beneficiary designations, and other key documents should be reviewed after major life events and periodically over time.
• Selecting the right executor can help reduce family conflict and administrative burdens.
• Trusts can provide flexibility when addressing the unique circumstances and needs of individual beneficiaries.
• Preparing heirs through education, communication, and real-world financial experience can help support a successful wealth transition.

For many families, wealth represents more than financial resources. It reflects years of hard work, values, experiences, and opportunities that can positively influence future generations. Creating a meaningful family legacy requires thoughtful planning that not only helps preserve wealth, but also prepares heirs, supports family harmony, and ensures your intentions are carried forward for years to come.

What does it take to build a family legacy?

Building and preserving wealth often involves thoughtful planning for the future. While estate documents and beneficiary designations play an important role, they represent only the foundation of a broader strategy. Comprehensive estate planning may help preserve family priorities, provide greater continuity across generations, and ensure your legacy reflects your goals and values.

Building a true family legacy to help protect your family’s wealth and serve your needs in the near term, while preserving it for future generations, requires detailed planning and ongoing oversight and management, says Jessica L. Ellis, Wealth Advisor with Regions Private Wealth Management.

“Family legacy planning is not a one-time event,” Ellis says. “It needs to be a living and breathing plan that adapts as your family evolves and as laws change. Surprises can happen that can cause a lot of distress if they’re not adequately prepared for.”

With potential future changes to tax policy, evolving family dynamics, and one of the largest intergenerational wealth transfers in history underway, families may benefit from revisiting their long-term legacy plans to help ensure their wealth remains aligned with their values and objectives.

Families may delay long-term wealth planning because conversations about death and inheritance can be difficult to have. But inadequate planning and miscommunication may lead to mistakes, similar to the unfortunate stories you hear about in the news: Someone passes away who didn’t leave adequate instructions for how their estate should be divided and the heirs end up in an expensive, years-long court battle over the assets. Or perhaps someone didn’t update their estate plan to reflect changes in their family, giving the bulk of assets to one heir while overlooking others.

So, how do you verify you’re taking the necessary steps to preserve your wealth and have it passed along according to your wishes? Here are five tips for building a lasting family legacy:

1. Evaluate strategic planning opportunities

Individuals and families may miss out on key opportunities to transfer their wealth more effectively and tax efficiently. Consider working with an advisor who can share insights on steps that may help reduce estate tax obligations and make sound decisions about wealth while living.

Taking advantage of appropriate planning opportunities may help preserve more assets for loved ones and charitable causes rather than losing value to unnecessary taxes or administrative complications.

Account titles, for example, are one commonly missed opportunity. Couples often jointly title their assets. When one passes away, the jointly titled assets may count toward their individual estate tax exemptions ($15 million in 2026). However, current tax law allows each spouse to own up to the estate tax exemption before incurring the tax. Proper ownership structuring and estate planning strategies may help married couples utilize available exemptions more effectively, depending on their individual circumstances.

Corporate executives and business owners may benefit from taking a proactive approach to wealth and legacy planning. Executives with stock options, for example, will want to exercise those options prior to expiration, which is typically after 10 years, Ellis says. Business owners may also find that early succession planning provides greater flexibility when considering the transfer of business interests to future generations.

2. Review your plan regularly

Another common mistake is failing to update paperwork. Ellis has seen many problems arise due to the failure to review a form or to make simple decisions.

For example, someone may name their spouse as the beneficiary on a retirement account or life insurance policy. Should the couple divorce without updating the beneficiary designation, the assets may pass to the former spouse depending on applicable law and account documentation.

Revisit all your financial paperwork upon any major life event in your family, including birth, death, divorce, marriage, starting a business, job loss, or a new job. A comprehensive review of your financial planning documents every three to five years can be valuable, regardless of whether a significant life event has occurred. Evolving personal circumstances, wealth considerations, and changes in tax law may present opportunities to enhance your planning strategy and ensure it remains aligned with your long-term priorities.

3. Evaluate your executor selection carefully

Individuals and couples may automatically assign the role of executor to their spouse or oldest child. But Ellis has witnessed cases in which that child would rather not have been given the job, for understandable reasons.

Depending on the complexity of your estate, the executor role can become a full-time responsibility and may require considerable financial expertise, Ellis says. “We have clients who have an ownership stake in many different businesses. Or sometimes they have homes in multiple states. As a result, the executor must file taxes in all of those states.”

Moreover, executors may have to go through probate court in multiple states or find real estate agents who can help them clean out and sell residences. Straightening all that out could take years of effort and saddle a family executor with unwanted responsibilities and liabilities.

“It can be a tough spot to be in, because other heirs may question what you’re doing and question your motives,” Ellis says. “As a parent, it is important for an already stressful event not to lead to a rift among my children and/or other surviving heirs.”

To prevent this type of discord, families with complex estates may select an institution, like Regions, as executor of their estate. An institutional executor may help navigate applicable state requirements, keep family members updated and assist in administering the estate efficiently, often without the same potential conflicts that may arise when a family member oversees the process.

Beyond managing assets, executor decisions may also help influence family relationships during a time when emotions can heighten decision making. Selecting the right person or institution can help reduce conflict and preserve family harmony.

“Naming a corporate trustee may help reduce the likelihood of disputes among beneficiaries,” notes Ellis. “It may keep the holiday gatherings enjoyable and allow everyone to focus on what matters most in the moment.”

4. Customize your plan

Parents may have unique considerations when determining how wealth will be transferred to future generations. Beneficiaries often have different levels of financial experience, life circumstances, and long-term goals, prompting families to consider strategies that provide both flexibility and thoughtful oversight. A well-structured estate plan can help ensure wealth is transferred in a manner that reflects the family’s values, intentions, and legacy objectives.

Because every beneficiary’s circumstances are different, estate plans should account for individual needs and potential challenges that could be associated with each beneficiary, Ellis says. Trusts may be helpful tools for dealing with such specific concerns. For example, a trust can be designed to motivate a beneficiary by paying out funds as the beneficiary earns income, perhaps even matching that income dollar for dollar. Trusts may also be used to help equalize estates between children and protect children financially after a remarriage, since spouses typically inherit all assets. “Trusts are a great way to achieve specific estate planning goals and ensure those goals are carried out in the future,” Ellis adds.

5. Prepare your heirs

Communication is also a key part of ensuring your heirs are ready to take the reins. Some affluent parents may not want to divulge their inheritance plans in advance, Ellis says. This may be due to modesty or the fear that the knowledge of a large inheritance may impact their child’s motivation to achieve. However, children who are kept in the dark may feel financially helpless when a parent passes away. They could be given large and sometimes complex assets such as real estate, investments, foundations, even businesses with little guidance on how to manage them.

Instead, heirs should at least be provided with a basic understanding of the family’s assets and financial responsibilities, to reduce the potential for major financial missteps once they inherit them. A good first step may be bringing them in to meet with the family’s advisor, Ellis says. They can ask questions about the wealth transfer process, and they will know whom to contact when a parent passes away.

Another strategy is to let the beneficiary practice handling wealth. This may be accomplished by providing a financial gift and coaching the child through the process of doing something constructive with it. One client Ellis worked with gifted an adult child approximately $1 million. A portion of those funds was used to build a house for their growing family, while the remaining funds were put into a portfolio designed for long-term growth.

Other parents may guide their children through the process of investing in a portfolio, starting a business or building a charitable foundation. Gifting may be a good idea from an estate planning perspective because it reduces the size of a taxable estate, Ellis says, and it comes with other benefits. “Gifting provides the opportunity to observe the financial acumen, or potential, of a beneficiary. And it may bring you joy to see how it benefits your family while you’re living.”

Ellis notes that building a family legacy is not a one-time project. “It is an ongoing process of aligning your wealth, values, and intentions with the future you hope to create for those you care about most. Through regular planning, thoughtful communication, and preparation of future generations, families can create a legacy that extends well beyond financial assets.”

Three things to consider

1. Contact an advisor in your area to get started on estate planning and trust administration.
2. Learn more about creating a family legacy that reflects your family’s values.
3. Learn more about creating a financial legacy for the next generation.

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