Interview: BRIAN M. DOUGLAS – ‘Plan Your Estate Before It’s Too Late’ Now Available on Amazon

     There are other financial tools and tips, there’s a lot of great things young people can do. Life insurance, I’m an attorney, not an insurance salesman, but life insurance only gets more expensive as you get older, and it’s such an important thing, but sadly so many people don’t realize that until they’re older in life and the premiums have gone up ten times versus what you could get when you’re younger. There’s a million tools, and tricks, and tips, but I think the family preservation and who will raise the children physically, who would get custody of them. Families are so spread out, where do they go? Meaning, my sister lives in Milwaukee, and so if something happened to me and my wife, do I uproot my children and send them to Wisconsin to where they don’t know anybody, they don’t have any friends up there, but we have family. Those types of decisions require a lot of thought and a lot of exploration.
Tamara Patzer: Basically it’s never too early to talk to an attorney about planning your estate and your legacy, and what happens to your family situation? You also talked about a legacy planning, what exactly does that mean in the overall scheme of things? Some people it’s like everything goes to my family, but other people want to leave a legacy to a larger group of people, so can you talk a little bit about legacy planning?

Brian Douglas: Sure. Legacy, we all know what legacy means, the textbook definition of it, but I really hesitate to define it specifically whenever I meet with someone because my goal is to determine what legacy means to you. You said it very well, my legacy and whether it goes to my family may be very different if your legacy, everything goes to your university that you went to or to a charity, or to your church, whatever that may be. That’s precisely what it is, it’s the person or the family’s goals on what they want, how they want to be remembered, how they want to define their own legacy. I see a lot of people that say, “Brian, we’re fine, we raised our children, we put them through college, they’ve got decent jobs, they’re doing well. I don’t really care that my children get anything from me, but I would like my grandchildren to get from me. I would like to have college funds set aside for my grandchildren if there’s money left over. I don’t want to give it to my kids so they can go and blow it on whatever because they got decent jobs and we did everything for them. They’re where they need to be in life and they’re self sufficient.”

     It’s a very personal question and it’s a very personal answer on how you define that. Like I said, you see churches, you see different charities, animal places, whatever moves you in life, they have the ability to benefit from you after you’re gone. If you want to leave them a gift or if you want to do something in some way to show an organization, or charity, or a person for that matter that they were really important to you. It’s always heartwarming to me when I work with someone and we’re going through the process, you have to learn the lay of the land, I have to know who all the players are, who the family members are, the children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, whatever the case may be, you find out very quickly who people’s circle is, that surround them and what’s important to them, and then they’ll throw in this other personal question. I always get asked the question, well who’s that? How is that person connected? Is that a child of a niece or whatever, and they tell you a story. No, that person was really great to my mother when she was sick or that person did this for me when I was young, or whatever. When people remember that, it’s just so special because first of all, they’re not expecting anything from you, that type of gift, those are the favorite kind. The few times that it’s ever happened to me in my life, and even in very small amounts, but I was remembered in a couple people’s wills that I would have never expected to be remembered in, and they weren’t clients or anything like that, don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to write myself in your will. Which, if you don’t want to give it to anybody else, you spell Brian with an I, not with a Y, so certainly you’re free to leave it to me, but the reality is these were people that I just didn’t expect it.

     It was so heartwarming to me that somebody thought enough about me and the relationship that we had that they wrote me in there and they gave me something, or they did something. It didn’t have to be big, it wasn’t millions of dollars life changing, it wasn’t even thousands of dollars in reality, it was very, very small and insignificant, the gift was insignificant, but the thought and the sentiment lasted a long time and I’ve got goosebumps telling you this story. Just thinking about it right now because that’s how powerful it is, and that’s defining your legacy. There’s no way, I can’t tell you how to define your legacy. I’ve got clients who come in and say, “Brian, this is what we’re going to do and I hope my last check bounces. I don’t care if I leave a dime to my kids,” and that’s fine too because that’s their legacy, and that’s what they want. It’s a very, very subjective question.

Tamara "Tami" Patzer

Tamara "Tami" Patzer is a publisher at Women Innovators Publishing and is a popular host at Business Innovators Radio. She has surpassed 500 interviews. She is the creator of Daily Success and award-winning Women Innovators. She works with authors, influencers, innovators, and trendsetters who offer professionals services. Tami teaches Social Media and Marketing courses at Florida Gulf Coast University.