Business Innovators Radio - The Last Love Letter: Why Estate Planning Is an Act of Love with Traci O’Neal Ellis, Esq.

Episode Date: September 17, 2026

The Last Love Letter: Why Estate Planning Is an Act of LoveGuest: Traci O'Neal Ellis, Esq.Host: Dr. Tamara PatzerShow: Thought Leaders Show: Legal EditionRecorded: August 18, 2026People often hear “estate planning” and immediately think about death.Attorney Traci O'Neal Ellis sees it differently.She describes an estate plan as a “last love letter” to the people who matter most.In this episode, Dr. Tamara Patzer talks with Traci about using estate planning to create clarity instead of leaving grieving family members to guess what someone intended.The conversation explores family dynamics, guardianship, blended families, communication, outdated plans and the questions people often do not realize they should be asking.In This Episode– Why estate planning is really about living– The estate plan as a “last love letter”– Why estate planning isn't only for wealthy families– The danger of outdated estate plans– Guardianship for minor children– Blended-family planning– Choosing the right people to carry out your wishes– Family dynamics and conflict– Why communication matters– Should-ask questions– Why curiosity matters when choosing an estate-planning attorneyAbout Traci O'Neal EllisTraci O'Neal Ellis is an attorney licensed in Georgia and Illinois with more than three decades of legal experience.Her work emphasizes thoughtful planning, family relationships, intentional communication and understanding what clients truly want to protect.Connect With TraciTraci EllisLinkedIn: Traci O'Neal EllisEstate-planning resourcesQuestions This Episode AnswersDo I need an estate plan if I am not wealthy?How often should I update an estate plan?What estate-planning problems affect blended families?How should parents select guardians?Should families discuss estate-planning decisions?What questions should my estate-planning attorney ask me?Key TakeawayDone thoughtfully, an estate plan can become exactly what Traci describes:your last love letter to the people you care about most.Legal Disclaimer: This program is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.The Thought Leaders Showhttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/the-thought-leaders-show/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/the-last-love-letter-why-estate-planning-is-an-act-of-love-with-traci-oneal-ellis-esq

You are listening to The Thought Leaders Show with the world's cutting edge hottest innovators, influencers, and impact makers today. If you are looking for inspiration and motivation, listen in. Welcome to the Thought Leaders Show. Now, here's your host. This program is provided for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing discussed during this interview should be considered legal. advice or the creation of an attorney-client relationship. Estate planning laws and individual

circumstances vary, so listeners should consult a qualified attorney licensed in their jurisdiction regarding their specific needs. So everyone, this is Dr. Tamara Patser, and this is the Thought Leader Show Legal Edition, where we introduce you to attorneys' legal profession, and thought leaders who are changing the way people understand the law, protect what matters, and to prepare for the future. I'm your host, Dr. Tamara Patser, and this is a really interesting conversation we're about to have

because many people associate estate planning with death. So what do they do? They do they want to avoid it. But today's guest, Tracy Ellis, she is an attorney, and she has more than 30 years in the legal profession, and she's licensed to practice in both Georgia and Illinois. And she says it does not have to be about death. It's really about love.

And that's the part that I really want to get into today. So again, Tracy, let's go ahead and dig into this. And I interviewed you shortly before this. And you brought up a concept and you called it the last love letter. And of course, I grasped onto that because it made so much sense to me. So I definitely want you to talk about that. But first, tell me a little bit more about your background. Well, thank you, Tamara.

I appreciate the opportunity to be with you today and have this really important discussion. So as you said when you introduced me, I'm an attorney licensed in Georgia and Illinois. I have been practicing law for over 30 years. and I also have been, by practicing law, sometimes that's not in my own practice. It's been in-house with several corporations over, across several industries, different sectors, public corporations, private corporations, nonprofits, for profit. And so I've used all of that legal experience. And all along, I always had my own.

practice. But in the last couple of years, I've been full-time in my own practice and back full-time in my own practice and focused exclusively on estate planning, which means helping families, individuals and families think about their legacies, helping them redefine how they see wealth. because a lot of people avoid estate plans because they think that's for the wealthy. But I try to help people redefine in their mind what wealth means and what legacy means and the importance of estate planning for yourself, for your loved ones. And I do look at it as a love letter, as you mentioned. So from your perspective, because I've been,

you did a lot of general counsel work over all of those different nonprofit, for-profit corporations and businesses, as well as now with families and the estate planning. What makes estate planning so personal for you? So for me, a few years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and I had to go through six months of chemo. And I'm grateful to God that I'm cancer-free today. But this has been my journey. And during one chemo session, I was sitting in the chemo infusion room and I just for some reason, estate planning came across my mind, my estate plan specifically. And I panicked because I realized that I didn't have an estate plan.

Well, actually, I did have one, but I didn't have one that would work for my family if I were to pass away or become incapacitated because that estate plan had been done 25, 28 years prior when I was married. My now adult kids were like four and one and a half, two, something like that. And so it didn't reflect my current life in any way. And it would have absolutely failed my family at the time that they needed it most. And so that was distressing for me, especially with a cancer diagnosis and sitting in a chemo infusion room. But I wasn't, Tamara, I wasn't thinking about wills and trusts and powers of attorney. I was thinking, if I die, what a mess, I'll leave for my kids. They don't, at that moment, I couldn't even tell you where my insurance policies were, let

alone my kids. They didn't know anything about my finances, my insurance policies, where to begin looking for assets or anything. And I was overwhelmed with the idea and the thought that. that at one of the hardest times of my kids' lives, if I were incapacitated or were to pass away from this cancer diagnosis, they would be in such a mess. And it would be on top of grieving, the loss of their mom. They would be confused, overwhelmed, all of that. And so as I was sitting there, I was thinking like, oh, my gosh, I love my kids too much to leave this kind of mess for them.

and what I need to do is get it together. I mean, I'm an attorney. I need to get it together and show them that I love them by having planned for them. And so that's how the concept of a love letter started to come into play for me and become real for me. That it's not, yes, of course, estate plans require documents, but these documents really can express What I want my kids to know is that I loved you so much. I love you so much that I thought about you. I planned for you.

I tried to make things easy for you. I've expressed to you the values that I've tried to raise you with the values that are important to me. I've scripted what I want my legacy to be. And I hope that you all understand and appreciate. how much I love you. And so I've started talking about this as love letters since then. That's really interesting because the words you use, legacy, values, love. When people come to you, are they generally thinking about it,

oh, I need a will, I need a trust. what kind of conversations do you have with people where you're able to actually show them what it is that they're really doing, which is a real true act of love that goes way beyond the money or the transfer of ownership? What do those conversations look like and sound like? So I think when people first come to me, they are thinking the documents, right? Like we're talking initially about, I don't start out with love letters. That conversation has to develop over time, but we start out talking about the documents and what type of plan they want and whether it's a will-based plan. And then the pros and the cons of will-based plans versus trust-based plans where you're

estate plan is grounded in a, usually revocable or revocable, however you pronounce it, but sometimes starting with an irrevocable trust. But we talk about the differences in what they really need. And then I introduce the concept of values-based drafting, love letter, both literally and figuratively, because I have clients for whom I do a draft of a love. love letter for them. And sometimes they just take the draft that I've done. It's a letter written to their family. And this is after I've spent time, excuse me, with the clients and understand a little bit more about their families. And I help them write actual love letters that accompany

their legal documents. But within the legal documents themselves, clients always have the opportunity, if they choose, to incorporate their values into plans. And so I introduce the topic. I give examples. And then if they're interested in that, then we can move forward with that. I have that in mind when I'm drafting. And so you could take the same subject matter. Let's say that you're leaving money for your, you pass away and you've got a child in high school and you're leaving money to pay for college. And you want to say, how, besides college, how this money can be used to fund extracurricular activities as well during college. So do you want the money used for travel abroad and cultural experiences? And some people

are like, nope, this is strictly for tuition, fees, books, room and board. Okay? That's one value, right? And so then we draft it that way. Some people are like, yeah, but, but, you know, But, you know, this is not for my kid to go around the world, you know, on world tours and whatnot. So with some restraints and stipulations, and so we draft that way. And some are like, heck, yes, I want my kid to be well cultured. I value those traveling abroad. And that's one of our values. We travel abroad as a family.

and I want my successor trustee five passed away, I want them to invest in my kids' cultural growth and exposure and whatnot. And so then I draft that way. And that's just one example of whether you're, you know, broadly liberal in the use of money for a certain, for an aspect of your beneficiary's interest in life. are you on the other opposite end and, you know, more conservative? And within the same plan, you can have both liberal, drafting liberal, where the trustee has liberal use of funds on behalf of the, or for the use of the beneficiaries, or you can draft

very conservatively or somewhere in between. That's values-based legacy planning. Also, you're speaking, you're identifying and pouring into your beneficiaries what type of legacy you want to leave. My parents valued cultural exposure and traveling abroad and exposure to world and culture and other people and other ways of doing things and seeing how others live. And so they showed that as a value and as part of their legacy by not only traveling with us when they were alive, but also funding. travel like that as well. That's one example of how you can express your values and the legacy that you're trying to leave. That's really fascinating because, again, most, you know, my experience is very limited, but it's more, it's all been about, oh, I have this house,

I want it sold, split the money up. And as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking about, you know, the values about traveling and having the experiences of like what I, when I was a teenager, I went to Thailand. And it was, there I was this five foot seven person in a land of very small people and petite people. and I had very pale skin and they kept noticing that calling it out. And of course, I was from a little town in Oregon, and so nobody had ever looked at the color of my skin before and actually kept talking about it over and over again. So it made me appreciate what a lot of different people go through

because of simple things like that. because it, but I can see how that would be a really interesting value to have. Thinking about the paperwork, again, why do, if an estate plan is going to fail, what makes it fail more than anything else? Well, the number one reason why it's going to fail or has the high potential of, failing is. A lot of people think that, you know, I don't have an estate plan. When I do seminars, I ask everyone in the room, raise your hand if you have an estate plan already. And a few hands will go up. And I'll say, you know, and I repeat it, hey, no, raise your hand. Maybe you didn't hear me. Raise your hand if you have one. And again, people are confused. And what I say is

everybody's hands should be up because everybody has an estate plan. If you didn't create it yourself, the state you live in has one for you. That is the default plan. And that is the default and I promise you it's probably not what you want, right? So one way that an estate plan is going to fail your family at the moment that they most needed to work is if you weren't intentional about creating your own plan and that you let the state's default plan dictate where your assets go to whom and in what amounts. That's one way.

And then if you have done your estate plan, but it does not reflect your values, does not reflect the legacy that you want to leave, it can be confusing to your loved ones who are left behind when they don't understand, well, how does this happening? That's not what we've ever talked about. So if it's in conflict with conversations that you've had, oftentimes people will say, I was promised X or I was promised Y, but the documents don't say that. And that leads to or can lead to court, chaos, conflict, and confusion, which is what I try to avoid with my clients. And so I do a lot of talking with them about that. My goal is to keep your family out of court, chaos, conflict, and confusion over what is happening here. I encourage families to share their estate planned with their loved ones with, you know, at least adults or older teenagers at a high level and according to their understanding, but to share it with them and to explain. Here are the choices that we've made, and here's why we've made them.

And some people do that and some don't. And it's fine either way, no judgment, no heat, no shame about that. But it's another way of bringing your loved ones into your planning and letting them know ahead of time that there was no undue influence here. None of you all have twisted our arms about things we've made these decisions independently and in consultation with our attorney and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So those are ways that the plans can fail when there are huge surprises, when there isn't one that you've created and you've defaulted. Your family is now left with the state's default plan. When there's a lack of understanding about the rationale because they didn't know ahead of time and didn't have time to sit with an absorb it. And sometimes, you know, even when they know, it's still because some people will say, you know, I don't want to, I don't, they're not going to like it and I don't want that smoke now. They can find out after I pass away. And that's fine too. That's a, that's a, that's a, that's a decision that can be made as well. But I do try to encourage clients to write a letter. If you're not going to, even if you're not going to talk about it ahead of time, let's do a, let's literally write a last.

love letter that goes with the estate plan that can be discovered. We also, I also offer legacy recordings and that's where I would record you and either I can interview you about your legacy and your values and the love you have for your families and what you want to communicate to them and what you wish for them or you can just talk. I don't, I can just do the recording and you can just talk yourself about what you want to say to your loved ones. And so, um, I'm, you can just talk, um, If you think about how powerful that is, that your loved ones will always have that video of you, that recording. And future grandchildren, your grandchildren can see it. Future grandchildren can see it and hear from you as well.

So those are ways that I try to help reduce and or eliminate, if possible, the confusion, the chaos, the conflict, the confusion. I like all of those because how many stories have we all heard about somebody saying all I had left of my mom or dad was a telephone message where it might have been just them saying please leave a message or they called you and missed the call and they just said, you know, like I can still hear my dad, you know, going, Pam, it's dad. call me. And the other day I was looking for that and I couldn't find it. I'm sure it's in my phone somewhere. But that seems to be one of the things. But how great would it be to have somebody actually talking to you or just like you said, the letter I have a little handwritten letter from my dad.

It was just a paragraph that he had written to me. And my dad was left-handed. So, you know, it's very distinct. handwriting. But yeah, the letter, the values, the videos, I think those are all

I think very valuable in themselves even if it wasn't. And then that meeting that you were talking about it's almost like that would be a good idea if you were able to

to say, okay, this is the plan, So I don't want you to be upset when you hear this, you know, my whole experience is watching this stuff on TV, right? And then there's everyone, you know, with the look on their face, like, oh, I thought this. Just like my mother, when she passed away, I was in my early 20s. And she did not have a will. she didn't have any real instructions about anything, but I just, we knew what she would have done. So I made sure that I gave each one of her grandchildren like a little piece of jewelry.

And I thought about, you know, oh, that's so-and-so's birthstone. My mom would have done, you know, because she thought it like, you know, I knew how she would have thought. but I don't know that everybody would even think about things like that. So I think that's really important. When another thing, what about we live in a world of mixed families, right? People get married, people get divorced, they have children together. They have children from other relationships. How important is it to get that.

situated in your estate plan. So that let's say that you married a woman and her child was two years old. And you became that child's dad. And then you had two more children together. And he passes away. And all of a sudden that two-year-old, oh, you're not really his kid. You know, but yet to that person, that was her. her father. How should somebody handle those type of circumstances or how could they handle them

to make that so that everybody still feels loved and part of the family because you were, in all sense of the word, a real family? Yeah, those are blended family situations is what we call them blended families. And it's so important that blended families, do this type of planning because it is really, really easy to end up disinheriting kids accidentally, right? When you didn't really mean to, that would not have been your intention or you did not mean for your current spouse to inherit most of it. You would have wanted to leave more to all of your children. It's trying to avoid the state's default plan again.

And the default plan does not take into consideration nuances of blended families. It does not take into account values. It does not take into account your legacy. It is purely a legal mechanism for distributing assets. And if you pass away without your own plan that you have intentionally crafted, you are going to fall into the default plan of the state, whatever state you live in. And it just, I've yet to see someone be like, oh, yeah, like we love this plan. This is great.

We couldn't have done better ourselves. That's not how your loved ones feel about that default plan after the fact. So for blended families especially, the estate planning process is vitally important. and it's important that you work with an attorney who has experience with blended families so that they ask the right questions. Sometimes you can create a plan that you think works, but if you don't ask, it doesn't cover a situation, a specific situation because the question wasn't asked.

And my clients don't always know what questions to answer, what to tell me up front. I have to probe and ask the next question. and your estate planning attorney needs a keen sense of curiosity and really a willingness and curiosity to dig into the family dynamics, family situation. When I'm working with families with minor children, for example, who do you want to be the guardian of your kids if something happens to you all? You're incapacitated. You pass away in a common accident. Who do you want to be the guardian? And a lot of times people haven't thought about that yet. And so they're, before they get to, often before they get to who they want to be the guardian,

they're like, well, not your sister, not your mother, not your brother, not my, you know, they're going through the process of elimination and can get to who they want. And so then, but I want to go back and talk about the people that you eliminated. Are any of those people, would they be surprised? that they were eliminated as the guardian, would they contest guardianship of their niece or nephew or whatever going to the person that you chose? And sometimes those conversations surface some situations where it could be messy in the guardianship realm and someone might contest it. And so then we want to write a letter that is held privately with me and my client that explains

why I don't ever want my, fill in the blank, my brother, my sister, this particular person to ever be guardian of my child. And I hold that letter. And if that person ever contests guardianship, then we've got some basis to go to the person and say, you might not want to do this, because otherwise, this letter is going to become public. So, but you have to get, you have to have a sense of curiosity and always be willing to ask the next question and be willing to go wherever the conversation leads you to get to uncover the best answers. And for blended families, that's particularly important because there are biological children, there are stepchildren involved, and oftentimes they're going to go. Guardianships are going to go different ways,

different places because of biological relationships. And so it's with blended families, it requires an even keener sense of curiosity and a solid leading your clients through a discovery process of what they really want and how they want to protect all of the children and what's most important. What I'm really hearing as you speak is I'm just thinking about how important. it is to choose the right estate planning attorney because if you choose somebody who's just like, let's just say, ask the, you know, frequently ask questions and they answer all the basic questions, but they don't actually have any interest in what you're telling them and asking those should ask questions. Because I think that's where that's going to make the difference is, yes, most estate attorneys could probably answer, you know, all of the basic, all the paperwork. But then what you're talking about is you actually have to look at that individual client, their family relationships.

You have to ask those tough questions. Or like you said, you have to have a sense of curiosity about. why are you talking about guardianship in the first place? You want to protect that child, right? That's how I would view it, is my role, is I want to make sure that I'm protecting that child so that they grow up without me and end up having a good life

and that they don't have to have any additional trauma in their lives just because I'm not here. So that's a really important factor, I think, just pointed out is you have to have that empathy and be able to ask those questions and maybe even ask difficult questions. And so it just sounds to me like it's really important to choose the right person, you know, behind that law degree. You have to really look at that and make that selection. It just really dawns on me that that's a really important choice. So there's some things, and you mentioned it early on as you were sitting there in that

chemo chair, you said that you had an estate plan, but it was like 28 years old. And so updating, how often should you update your estate plan and what are all of the documents you have to think about when you do update something like I imagine beneficiaries. I've actually looked in the state of Florida. They have that found money system. And there's some money that I think my, I don't know, a friend of mine would be entitled to accept the beneficiary is the ex-wife. and it's sitting there at the state of Florida like six or seven accounts

and they all have the person's name and then their ex-wife. And I think now both of them have passed so who knows what that means. So what are the documents that people should be updating regularly or at least having some type of an annual review or some type of a review on a regular basis? So I recommend every three years that you take a look at it or every time there's a major life change. So if a beneficiary passes away, you want to rethink, go back and look and see what does your trust plan say about if I'm leaving $10,000 to this child and that child passes away. What does my trust plan say? Then does that $10,000 go back among the siblings to be split up?

Does it go to my child's children or my grandchildren to inherit? You just, you want to check in every three years or when something happens, something major. There's a marriage. There's a divorce. There's a death. You pick a successor trustee who was a great choice last year when you made it, when you made it. but now is not such a great choice anymore. And so you want to think about those things.

Is your power of attorney for health care, your power of attorney for finances? Is that person, are those still the right person or are those the right people? Still, you've got to constantly, this is not a created, stick it in a drawer and forget about it, right? You want this to be a living document. That's why it's like this is so not. just about death. It's while you're living, you're making sure that you're making decisions,

that you have decisions in place that reflect who you are and what your values are, what your legacy is, and who you want to be a part of the continuation of those values and legacies. And that requires constant vigilance not every day, not every month, like I said, every three years or when something happens. Deaths, births, divorces, fractured relationships or someone just, you know what, back then a couple of years ago, I thought that Tracy would make a good financial power of attorney, but now I'm not so sure she just filed her third bankruptcy and money's probably not her thing. And so, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So you want to be thinking about those things, but don't just stick it in

a drawer. And literally, you know, I did an estate plan. It went in mine and my then husband's safe, and neither one of us thought about it again, ever. So. Well, again, out of sight, out of mind. And then again, so many people equate estate planning with death. And I've even had conversations. It took me a long time to get somebody who needed a will, a will. And every time I brought it up, they go, oh, are you trying to, you want me to,

die and it's like no I just want to protect the children so that if something were to happen to you that they would be protected but it took years like oh you're trying to wish it on me no I'm not I'm trying to protect

who you love with this I wanted to ask you a little bit because you know estate planning is really about life not death and I think that That's really important. And again, a lot of people think about estate planning is a transfer of assets.

And you talked about, you know, the love letter. What about the legacy, the stewardship of the wealth and assets? Of course, some people, they may have a lot more in terms of wealth and cash. or assets or property. But the stewardship, and I wanted to ask you, what does stewardship mean to a legacy or to a state planning? And what is it to you? What is your definition?

It's a great question. When I think of stewardship, I think of the responsible and loving intentional managing of assets, values, and legacy. I steward my legacy. It's not just money or insurance policies, which translate to money. But again, I have values that I want to pass on. I have a legacy that I want to be remembered for. I intentionally stuble. steward that, right? I am constantly thinking about how to become the ancestor I want to be. Right. And so that is that responsibility, the intentionality around cultivating a life that you want to

pass on parts of that life, again, the values and the legacy and the heart. assets as well as, you know, the soft assets of those values and that legacy. So it's, it's a very broad way of looking at what is my, what is the contribute? What am I building, right? What am I working towards? What have I, it's like when you raise, when you're raising kids, right? You have these babies, they're born and you're thinking about all the things, you know, that you want to teach them and all the things that you want to instill in them. And the, what you want to expose them to. And as they grow and they, you know, depending on your situation, your your goals with them may change or you're being very intentional about the things you're exposing your kids to and very intentional.

That is stewarding the raising and development of your children, right? Likewise with your estate or your legacy, you are intentionally building that. and cultivating it and thinking and making shifts according to as we all grow and we age and we change and our values change or develop or get refined and whatnot. You're constantly working on that. And your life and legacy plan or your estate plan can reflect where you are and what your goals are, what you're hoping for and wishing for. And that's why I'm saying like every three years or so or every time something,

annually if something is major is going on, you want to be reflecting on, does this plan still reflect who I am and what I want for my loved ones? And that's a continuous process. So I think that's a really interesting concept of the legacy of stewarding. And so as a grandparent, I'm a grandparent. My children are, my youngest is 30-something. And then now I have grandchildren ranging from 21 down to about, what, two now. So I have, and I think about the legacy of who I am. And then I think about all the other people out there.

So how do grandparents, parents, and I imagine, you know, if my dad was still alive, he'd be a great grandparent. How do you, simple ways, I guess, besides the estate, do you look at your generational, you know, because I kind of look at this sometimes because that legacy factor. And how is, how am I going to instill in them how not to lose everything I built? Is that part of what you help people look at too in this adventure, I guess is the way I would see it, your life adventure of estate planning? Right, yes. Well, hopefully when you're raising kids and whatnot and even with grandkids, you know, you're talking to them about your views of responsible being the stewards of finances and resources.

but we can codify your values around that type of stewardship in your estate plan by putting, you know, some people are leaving money to kids or grandkids, but with stipulations that they have to show certain, meet certain financial benchmarks, financial literacy benchmarks, or they have to demonstrate that they can manage money, right? And that doesn't mean everybody's becoming an investor, but it does mean that you are demonstrating that you're not going to run out and buy a new Ferrari and take every dime you've got to go get your dream car that, you know, three years from now won't not really be as meaningful to you. So we can put, there are different lessons that people.

people want depending on their values. And so if financial stewardship is important to you for your children or for your grandchildren to exhibit, then we literally can put in, hey, there are four steps to getting these distributions. You must take this course. You must master this concept. You must have saved on your own. You will be matched dollar for dollar or 50 cents on the dollar or $2 for every dollar that you're able to save by age 25. I mean, there are zero limitations, really, to how you can construct, create, imagine your estate plan and the directions that you want to leave. I have one client who they have a home that they're, that,

They are very proud to have acquired and almost paid off. And it's appreciated in value. And they would like for the home, initially it was that the home never be sold and always be kept in the family. Well, that sounds like something laudable, right? Like, that's a great idea that this homestead will always be part of this family. But we had a conversation about the practicality of that and how, without knowing, what's going to happen out in the world. It could, you could be hamstringing future generations if it becomes impractical

or unaffordable. What if property taxes skyrocket five times what they are now? What if the laws change and make owning this property untenable? What, you know, there's so many, there are too many unknowns that you could be saddling your family with baggage, right? So we can encourage that the property stay in the family, but you have to leave room for decisions to be made that it's not tenable. And so we put language in there around the value and the desire to maintain this as a family home, but also how to and when it's okay to get out of and not specifically when if taxes go up too much, but more generically, if it's decided by

majority of the beneficiaries, that it is untenable, financially unfeasible to maintain the property, things like that. Another way that you can really steward, if you will, your legacy into future generations, is, so we talked about the, you know, having to meet financial benchmarks or having to have attained certain stages in life. All right. So we call sometimes there's a blending of ages and stages. You can get so much when you're 21 and so much if you graduate college. You can incentivize things.

A client wants to incentivize in her grandchild entrepreneurship. And so there is a huge sum of money that can be given to this child once she's of age. If she pursues entrepreneurship, it will be seed money. A good investment, good amount of money can be invested. Now, there are stipulations to that. There has to be a business plan. This has to, in that business plan, the projected financials have to be reviewed by an accountant or financial advisor and someone has to deem this financial plan viable.

And there are all these milestones that have to be met to get this large sum of money. But that is a way of incentivizing entrepreneurship. She's not punished if she doesn't pursue entrepreneurship. Ultimately, the money would go to her anyway. But this is a way of incentivizing the setting aside of this specific amount of money. There are incentives for, if you graduate, college, you get this, but if you graduate with a 3.5 or greater on a four-point scale, there's a, you know, $10,000 bonus to what you're already going to get. And so incentivizing

scholarship and doing well educationally. So they're just, the sky is the limit once we talk, and I understand what your values are and what's important to you and how that might play into what you want to do with your, legacy and how you want that legacy to be reflected in your estate plan. I find it very interesting because it's so much more creative than what I could have ever imagined because, again, most people probably think that estate planning is, you know, dry, boring, black and white, just, you know, it has to be this way. But everything you're describing I can see that it would help somebody

like their personality comes through their values, the gift of whatever it is they're giving. And I can see how that creativity actually helps it travel through all the different generations. And I really like that concept of, yes, we would like to keep this in the family, but I'm not going to lock you into it if it becomes a burden that can't be taken care of.

Because I think that's sometimes what happens is that, you know, a property or something will happen. And then there you are trying and you can't afford to maintain it. So it just goes down. So before I let you go, what is the best way for somebody to get in contact with you? Well, you can start by looking at my website, which is Tracy Ellis.com, T-R-A-C-I. You can email me at Tracy at Tracy Ellis.com or call at 404-49-3792. But email me is probably the best way.

Okay, Tracy Ellis. And then you can email Tracy. And I'll also put that into the show notes so you can easily find that. Before, would you, is there anything that you'd like to add before we go? Just I would encourage everyone to be sure that you don't default to the state's plan, your state's plan, but rather be intentional about creating your own. plan and that reflects who you are. And find an attorney to work with that will also draft according to your values and the legacy that you're trying to create. So everyone, today we had, I'd say, a very

comprehensive, interesting conversation about estate planning through, I think, an entirely different lens than how most people look at estate planning. So think about it. If you are someone who wants to show your family and loved ones, how much you really thought about them, cared about them, love them and wanted to make sure that your passing and you transitioning to wherever. I think this really gives you an idea of how you can leave behind that legacy so that your family can carry on without you. And again, I think one of the most important things that I got from the conversation is estate planning is not just for wealthy people and that every person must take time and have an estate plan

or like Tracy said, the state already has one for you and you won't like it because it will probably eat up anything that there was and it'll take a long, long time for it to resolve. And if you really think about it, estate planning is for living. It's not, none of this is about death at all. It's about living and showing how much you care. So Tracy, thank you so much. I really appreciate all your time today. Thank you, Tamara.

I appreciate your willingness to have this discussion and just thank you. Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this. It's one of my favorite subjects. Everyone, this is Dr. Tamara Patser, and this is The Thought Leaders Show, Legal Edition. You've been listening to The Thought Leaders Show. To get all past shows and to get all future shows, go to Thoughtleadershow.com.