The most important legacy for many parents is to see their children and grandchildren benefit from their prosperity and success. Most parents hope their children will get along and maintain a sense of family long after the parents have retired or passed on. Yet, most families avoid candid conversations about passing the family wealth, even when it involves issues of business succession and passing the family business.Why? Most families are not able to have candid relaxed conversations about money, family, siblings, power, old family issues and goals without triggering old sore spots and inflaming feelings. This is why the majority of families do not have detailed wealth and business succession plans.

The first stage of estate planning is not a financial discussion. It is about your family, your goals, your family's future, your family's business, and the feelings of all the parties involved. These are not merely financial decisions. They are important concerns that involve questions of family values, family dynamics and decision making. Accountants, attorneys and other financial professional are not trained in facilitating these conversations. They are trained primarily to implement the plans and make those plans tax-efficient and effective.

Meeting with a professional trained in family dynamics is PHASEONE™. This is not group therapy. The leader is a trained specialist from outside the family whose job it is to lead and facilitate a discussion about these very personal issues and manage the dynamics and personalities of the patriarch and matriarch and the brothers and sisters. Ideally this person will have a background in the psychology of family dynamics, financial planning, and business to best understand all aspects of the discussion. The leader provides a step-by-step structure and the guidance for exploring the values on which the final plans will be based, as well as balancing the potentially competing views, power plays and voices that are a part of every family.

PHASEONE™ is the opportunity to have the most profound, philosophical, and meaningful conversation you and your family have ever had. From these discussions, which may last a day or may evolve over the course of several weeks or months, an understanding is reached. This understanding is articulated in your Family Legacy Plan. The Family Legacy Plan will be the basis on which the actual estate or succession plan is implemented, i.e., the implementation of wills, trusts, wealth transfers, control decisions, business, ownership and management structures, buy-sell agreements, charitable bequests, etc. The discussion also raises issues about what is fair treatment versus what is equal treatment, including: How will children of unequal circumstances or abilities be treated? Will leaving the kids too much money ruin them? How and when do I transfer control? What if they don't do what I want them to do? What if my spouse re-marries? For many families, this is the first time there has really been a profound reflection on the values and meaning and biases that have been assumed, but never really discussed. The Family Legacy Plan is, therefore, the culmination of some very meaningful conversations about money, power, friendship, charity.

The Family Legacy Plan provides the roadmap for all of the family's other planning activities. This plan provides a clear roadmap of "What you want to happen, and when." Starting with the family's shared values, this Legacy Plan will outline the issues and contingencies the family has identified as important. It will also spell out each of the family's goals in clear, non-technical language, as well as the priorities the family has assigned to those goals. The family can then turn over this document to their other advisors (such as their financial planner or their estate planner), whose job it is to develop the implementation plan, recommend specific actions, and create whatever documents may be needed to execute the plan. These plans and documents answer the basic question, "How do my goals become executed, and when?"

In Alice in Wonderland, Alice approaches the fork in the road and asks the Cheshire Cat, "Which road should I take?" The Cheshire cat asks, "Where are you going?" Alice replies, "I don't know," to which the Cat replies, "then any road will get you there!" PHASEONE™ is frequently ignored or treated without serious consideration. When people jump directly into the document drafting, or insurance buying, or financial planning, the documents and plans simply do not reflect the kind of deep introspection and thinking that a lifetime of work deserves and future generations rely on. To go to an Estate Planner or Financial Planner without having gone through this process of really digging into family values all too often yields a plan and results that do not reflect the family's true values and intentions.

The time and cost of EPIC Wealth Advisors' PHASEONE™ depend entirely on the facts and circumstances and complexity of the factors affecting each family. We generally recommend an initial two-hour consultation for a flat fee of $500. This may be sufficient for simple family structures and simple family business situations. The size of the estate or the business also typically affects the time and complexity of PHASEONE™. A $100,000,000 million estate, for example, will typically but not necessarily require more time and effort than a $5,000,000 estate. Greater time is also generally required for more complex family structures (blended families, multiple marriages, multiple generation families, multi-cultural families, cross border/international families, etc.). Similarly, the more complex the family's business interests (non-family partners, family partners, family or children managing the business, multiple businesses, etc.), the more issues there are to be discussed. At the end of the initial two-hour meeting, EPIC Wealth Advisors will prepare an outline of fees and a timeline before proceeding with follow-up meetings.