Ted Gudorf (00:00.737)

Welcome everybody to our podcast today. I’m really excited because I have a long time acquaintance of mine, Stan Miller, an attorney from Little Rock, Arkansas. Stan is a nationally known respected colleague of mine who we’ve known each other for at least 25 years. And Stan has the wonderful, the great

idea of talking about legacy planning as compared to estate planning. In fact, Stan is the author of a best -selling book called Your American Legacy, Powerful Strategies That Instill Lasting Values for Generations. And I thought that my audience would really benefit from learning from Stan about this concept of legacy planning.

and what it all means. So Stan, welcome to the show.

Stan Miller (01:04.248)

Ted, it’s an honor to be a guest. Thanks for the invitation.

Ted Gudorf (01:09.793)

How long have you been involved in the estate planning world?

Stan Miller (01:15.15)

Remember the moment it happened, I practicing other kinds of law and wasn’t very happy. I did a state planning interview in 1986 and by the end of that interview I decided this was going to be the calling of my life. And I don’t know how many years that is, that’s math, I’d have to get the calculator to do the subtraction, but it’s been a while.

Ted Gudorf (01:39.553)

Well, that’s a long time to be in the trenches here. Obviously, you’ve been successful. You are the owner, founder of Pinnacle Legacy Law, and you’re based out of Little Rock, Arkansas, right?

Stan Miller (01:54.968)

Based out of yes, but we’re expanding into other cities and yeah, we’re on a growth track now. We’re gonna be in other places, so pretty exciting stuff.

Ted Gudorf (02:05.867)

So are you expanding beyond Arkansas and developing more of a national presence with your firm?

Stan Miller (02:13.24)

We are, yeah, we’re opening an office in Las Cruces, New Mexico here in the next few weeks. And we’ve got plans to go other places too.

Ted Gudorf (02:24.993)

You know, our relationship dates back to when I joined Wealth Council. You had the distinction of being one of the 10 founding attorneys for Wealth Council. You know, back in the day when I joined, there was maybe 200 lawyers, maybe 250. And today, through a lot of your efforts, I think they now have in excess of 8 ,500 lawyers.

Stan Miller (02:54.03)

So I think actually if you count all the lawyers, not just the law firms, but the lawyers who are engaged in estate planning, who work for those firms, it’s something north of 15 ,000 actually.

Ted Gudorf (03:06.123)

Wow, I didn’t realize it had grown to that extent.

Stan Miller (03:11.534)

Yeah. that’s, you know, we’re no longer owners of the company. We sold it back at the end of 2021. So I’m not, I don’t have the same connection to the data that I did before, but yeah. know, we, when we first began, when we first founded that company, you know, it was really interesting. really never did, we didn’t do that with the idea that we would ever grow it and even sell it. was honestly never even part of the conversation.

founded that company because all of us as practitioners needed the tool, the tool set that, that that company would provide and nobody else was providing it. And so we got together and said, you know, we need these things. Let’s start a company to create these, these tools. And while we’re at it, if other people need it, it makes sense to offer it to them too. And that’s really, that’s really how the company got founded and grew.

We just kept adding things because members would come to us and say, what if you did this? We need this. And so we do that. that’s the whole thing really grew organically over a 25 year period.

Ted Gudorf (04:26.229)

You know, I know for my practice, obviously the document creation software was a critical piece of it, but I would say this for me, the continuing education that I received was really what set Wealth Council apart. And then the collaboration, the collegiality of folks like yourself, I know being a young estate planning attorney at one point in time, now I’m old, but…

But when I was a young estate planning attorney 25 years ago, it was really helpful to have a collegial collaborative experience with other estate planning attorneys across the country. And it allowed those of us in a small firm to almost feel like we are a part of a larger firm and develop expertise that would have taken endless years to develop.

we were able to get through the teaching of our fellow colleagues at our various conferences.

Stan Miller (05:26.284)

know, Wealth Council, I believe, was successful, actually became the most successful business in the space that it occupied. That is the software and education solution to estate planning firms. And I believe that Wealth Council’s success was the direct result of the decision that we made. And it was a challenging decision.

because it was really popular over the years to say that you had a software company. And we would bring in people to help us run the company who were all excited about the idea of being a software executive, being on a flight somewhere and telling the guy they’re sitting next to that they’re the president of a software company. And so I had to give this speech about four times a year when we would have business retreats.

and say, guys, you’ve to remember, we’re not a software company. We’re a member experience company. And software is one of the things we provide. But fundamentally, we’re a member experience company. And we were the only company in the space that did that. Everybody else in the business actually had a software company. And I think the thing that really made it work for us is that we spent money.

having cocktail hour and having these educational events and creating the opportunity for members to really get to know each other and to create a culture of collaboration. And I really feel like it was that, that differentiated us from everybody else out there. And I’m hopeful, continue to be hopeful that the new owners of the company understand that that’s the distinction that really

that I think really sets Wealth Council apart from all the other players in that space.

Ted Gudorf (07:30.113)

Well, that’s great to hear you talk about that. And I agree 100 % with you. Let’s talk about your book, The American Legacy. Let’s talk about legacy planning. What is the concept? How does estate planning and legacy planning, you’ve been in this space for a long, long time. What is the key distinctions? And let’s talk more about the details once we understand what the basic premise is.

Stan Miller (07:58.722)

Yeah. So the fundamental premise for me is that, I would like to be a voice that, that helps launch what I’m calling a second revolution in, planning. No, the Ted, I think you’re old enough. You, you remember, you know, a few decades ago when most planning, when, somebody went to see an attorney to get their estate plan done.

The odds are pretty good that they would come out of that experience with a will, a will plan. And so there was a movement that came along. I think it started maybe in California in the eighties and continued into the nineties where, you know, there were guys who said, you know, will planning doesn’t really get you what you want. most people I think who go have a will made have a will made because they’ve heard about how bad probate is.

And they really like to keep their family out of probate court. And they don’t really realize that when you have a will -based plan, it effectively, in most cases, it guarantees a probate. so this revolution came along in the eighties, early nineties, where we trend the whole planning community transitioned away from will -based planning to living trust based planning. got into the planning.

business in the early stages of that. And, you know, I was a guy that was running around my state doing live workshops, teaching people that they needed a trust rather than a will. and, and, know, inciting the wrath of the bar. had some old guys who had, you know, had built their whole career around doing probates and they had the big will file. you know, and I got lectured to.

pretty severely by some of these guys, but over a period of about 10 years, there was this sea change in how planning was done, where we moved away from wheel planning to trust planning. So I look at that as the first real revolution in estate planning. But where my head is now, Ted, is I really believe that the next revolution is a revolution that, that, that,

Stan Miller (10:24.852)

opens up the way we think about planning so that it’s not focused merely on transferring of financial wealth, but the transferring of both financial and non -financial wealth. Because it turns out that when we sit down with clients, they do have goals, objectives, they don’t want to pay more taxes than they have to, they don’t want to have more

They don’t have unnecessary fees or costs associated with transitioning wealth. But, you know, when you really ask deeper questions, it turns out that the deeper goal, the deeper objective is to leave a legacy, to have the wealth that they have accumulated transitioned in a way that produces the result they want. Most people really want to leave good kids. They want to leave good grandkids. They want their family to…

make an impact in the community and the world to make a positive difference. They want their kids to make them proud. In order to do that, they know that they have to instill values in these kids. It’s not just about leaving them money. It’s about instilling values in them so that the wealth, the financial wealth they leave is coupled with a value system

that allows that wealth to be used in the right way to accomplish the outcomes that they want and to not do the damage that it almost inevitably will do if the wealth is transferred without the values. And so what I’m hopeful is that over the next 10 years, I can have enough conversations with enough people that I can hopefully be a part of inspiring the planning community.

to really open the aperture to how they think about it and how they talk about the planning process so that the legacy dimension of planning is infused into the planning process so that it’s just, it’s ubiquitous. It’s part and parcel of the conversations we have with clients. And that means that not only will clients come to your office and create legal documents that

Stan Miller (12:50.104)

that say who gets their stuff when they die, but they’ll do some other things along with that that will effectively communicate family history and stories and values in a way that’s compelling and lasting so that even while they’re living and certainly after they’re gone, those stories and values and traditions that they build around this will have a continuing and lasting impact in the lives of these people.

that will make a significant and positive difference in how they live their lives and how they behave in the world and the impact that they have. That’s my goal. I know it’s a pretty big goal, I watched the living trust revolution and I saw the role that wealth counsel played in bringing attorneys in and getting attorneys educated on how to do this. I think we really raised the bar substantially in how

planning got done, I think that the opportunity for us now is to move into the second revolution where we reimagine what happens so that it incorporates the legacy dimension, the transition of non -financial wealth so that the financial wealth has the impact, the desired effect that our clients really want.

Ted Gudorf (14:15.915)

Give me some examples. Let’s talk about how would you incorporate legacy planning into an estate.

Stan Miller (14:26.056)

Yes, so there are a lot of ways for how to do it. And what’s interesting is that not every client we work with will have their fire lit by each of these solutions. But it turns out that when you lay out a smorgasbord of options, there’s usually something on the table that clients gravitate to and say, you know, I like that one. Let me do that.

So one of the things that’s really, I say is really popular is capturing and preserving family stories and history. And there are a lot of ways to do that. You can do that in, are people out there now that we can engage for not, and not spend that much money, but they’ll actually do interviews and capture and write the family story and history in a way that preserves it.

You can also do, it’s even, you I think more exciting is to actually, actually create a book. You know, there, it turns out now there are all kinds of people out in the country who will come sit down with you, sit down with your client, you know, for three or four or five days, turn on the recorder, let the client tell stories, recount, know, stories of struggle and challenge and success. And then, and then come back in two or three months and, and have a

book made out of that. And it’s a book that, you know, you know, that can be passed on down. You know, there, you know, there will be children six generations from now that’ll, that’ll appreciate that book because they’re reading about people who are part of, you know, provided them the DNA material. And so, so, so that’s, that’s an example. One of the things I really like to do, I’ve become something, hope I don’t over,

I hope I don’t push too hard with clients on this, but I really encourage every client, every client family to set up, to create at least a donor advised fund, you know, with a, with a community foundation. I’m sure, you know, there are community foundations all around the country. There’s some national, there are many that are local. I’m sure there in Ohio, you’ve got any number of choices, but the

Stan Miller (16:50.742)

encourage clients to create a donor advice fund and to develop a mission statement.

Ted Gudorf (16:57.919)

Well, before you go there, what is it? What is a donor advice fund?

Stan Miller (17:01.506)

I’m sure. Yeah, sure. Yeah. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a charity, a charitable entity. It’s a tax exempt charitable organization that can be set up really easily. And if you do this with the don’t, with the community foundation, there’s minimal paperwork. There are no fee. They don’t charge you fees to set it up. It’s really easy to set up. There’s no ongoing tax reporting. The community foundation does all that. And what you do is you make a contribution.

And you can even, you can start it with really small contributions. And then you can build in to your estate plan provisions that allow more money to drop into it later when you pass away. But I encourage clients to fund it and to fund it with some meaningful amount of money now, and then set up the tradition of having regular meetings, at least annual meetings where the family comes together. I suggest generally, I would say.

I suggest meeting at three o ‘clock on Thanksgiving afternoon. I like to have them have a written agenda, have things that get read, things that get said, maybe prayers that are prayed. I like to have the same food items served every time. I want to build in rituals and traditions around this so that our clients can chair this meeting and enjoy the.

the amazing satisfaction of seeing their young family members engaged in a discussion about how to make the world a better place and do it in ways that cannot possibly benefit them financially. I do believe that if I had to pick one single strategy out of my toolbox that would make the most positive, have the most lasting and positive impact on younger generation.

family members, it would be to set up a structure for disciplined and consistent proactive, the proactive practice of generosity. think the act of thinking about how to make the world a better place is transformative in the lives of humans. And I think having our clients set up a structure for that and fund it and lead it during the remaining years of their life.

Stan Miller (19:24.014)

is it begins to groove in that practice so that when they’re gone, the family members will continue that practice and do so in a way so that when younger generation family members reach a certain age, like 13 or 14, they’re brought into the room, you know, in a sense in a rite of passage ritual. So they now become part of the family. They’re now

invited into the room to have the meeting and to contribute ideas about how to make the world a better place. And then the family meets and discusses this. And then at the end of it, somebody sends an email to the community foundation where the donor advice fund is located and just tells them, you know, we’ve had a meeting and we want to send this much money to this charitable cause and this much money to that charitable cause. So, so it’s

really, really easy to administer, the powerful, impactful part of it is the opportunity to get around the table consistently and regularly with family members and have this conversation. I’ve never had anybody who’s done this who’s ever called me and said, I wish I hadn’t done it. It is transformative. You know, we’ve done something like this in our family, and I’m telling you that the experiences that I’ve had, setting

at the table with my son and my daughter -in -law where we’re having this conversation is, you know, it’s impactful. It’s, you know, I mean, to be able to watch my son and my daughter -in -law take a leadership role in advancing ideas about how to make the world better, you know, I had to, you honestly, I had to get out to Kleenex. It was…

It was quite something. And I think everybody should at least have that opportunity. Those are a couple of examples. know, there are others, you know, there ways that you can use, like, I’m going to say, artifacts, like family heirlooms. You know, you can’t divide a wedding ring many ways. You know, that wedding ring has to go to one person, right? You can’t split it up and have it go to multiple people. And so what we don’t want to do is to have artifacts be

Stan Miller (21:41.972)

source of division. What we would like to do is to have artifacts become effective and powerful value transmitters and there ways to do that if you pass them the right way, connect them to stories and build traditions around them. I tell the story of my book about how this woman did that with her wedding ring. She told a story about how she met the grandfather. She was meeting, know, the granddaughter came to visit on her 16th birthday.

And she took her back to the bedroom and told her the long version about how she and the grandfather, the grandfather had already passed away, but she told the story about how they met back in the depression era. And they had, he had no money. had this Model T car and he had just enough money to buy this little engagement ring. And the diamond was so small, you almost needed a magnifying glass to see it. But she tells the long version, the story.

And she says, you know, everything in our life really came from this ring. She said, you know, my family, our family, you, you know, came from this and the business that we started that has been successful really came about because of this. And so she takes the ring off and hands it to the granddaughter on her 16th birthday. And she says, so today to commemorate your birthday, I’m going to give you this ring, but not forever.

because whenever the next daughter in our family has her 16th birthday, it’s gonna be your job to tell her the story and pass the ring on to her. And so that’s an example, I think a really good example of how somebody could take an artifact that could be the source of conflict and turn it into an effective value transmitter that

Ted Gudorf (23:20.513)

Mm.

Stan Miller (23:40.596)

that creates a tradition that can last for many generations, right? And you can do lots of things with artifacts. Artifacts are pretty powerful. That’s why we have the Smithsonian in Washington, right? Because those artifacts tell stories, they mean something. But the family artifacts are even more impactful for us. They tell a story that really relates to us. And so thinking about that, not just making a list of who gets stuff, but…

going a step beyond that to make the decision about who gets an item, but write a letter that goes along with that, explaining the story of that artifact and why I chose you to be the recipient of it. Why I chose you in particular to be the recipient of it. So those are some different things, know, family stories, history, artifacts, traditions, you know, and proactive structured generosity, I think are the really, really

the really powerful tools.

Ted Gudorf (24:44.423)

It sounds like almost any family, regardless of their net worth, can be engaged in legacy planning.

Stan Miller (24:57.378)

Yeah, that’s the idea, right? So I’ve had to fight that myth, right? That this is something that rich people do. And so one of my objectives, is to democratize legacy planning. Legacy planning is something, the tools I outlined in my book, they’re tools that can be implemented by anybody at any net worth level. Writing a legacy letter, for example, and we’re now helping our clients do that.

where we help them compose it, to identify the things, the stories and the values they want to pass on and just put that in a letter format that gets passed on to younger generations. That doesn’t require a big financial investment. It doesn’t require any financial investment, but it has such an impact on the recipients of it.

Ted Gudorf (25:53.835)

You’re inspiring me. know, it makes me think one of the things we did here when we decided we wanted to do a podcast, we’ve got a little podcast room that’s kind of a recording studio. What do you think about the idea of allowing some of our legacy club members to maybe come into the recording studio and record a simple video to their ears? What do you think about that?

Stan Miller (26:20.814)

that’s on the list of things, right? It’s come in and let me interview you and let you tell the story. Let us record it. I’m saying, it’s like you record the story and then just preserve that on some kind of media, thumb drive or website somewhere so that your client or whoever can then share that with.

the entire family because those stories, those stories will be lost if they’re not captured and preserved. One of the things we found

Ted Gudorf (27:00.065)

You know, Stan, I am reminded back when I got involved in estate planning, which was around 1998, there was a lawyer from Indiana who was teaching at some of the seminars. He was from Indianapolis. And I remember him saying, my father died at an early age and my only regret is that I don’t have his voice.

anywhere where I can hear it. And I got that idea from him and so in my own life

my brother and I had a conversation about him recording my parents. Well, he did that somewhere around 2003, and I had not listened to that audio ever. But this past weekend for our family reunion, he delivered a thumb drive with the audio edited.

and handed it out to all my brothers and sisters. What a special gift that is.

Stan Miller (28:16.068)

yeah. Yeah. You know, and it just doesn’t seem like that big a deal when they’re here with you. But then when they’re gone, you know, you, you miss that, you know, I lost my son, Matt. I don’t have his voice and I would pay anything for that, know, but you have the opportunity. We all have the opportunity to invite our clients in to do an interview.

And by the way, one of the things that we’ve created is a guide for that conversation. And the idea would be that you would hand this guide to your client and it’s got a lot of white space. It asks a lot of questions, but it leaves a lot of room for them to write in answers or notes or to make a point of something they want to talk about. And also to make a note of things they wouldn’t necessarily want to talk about.

on the interview. There may be sensitive subjects that you don’t want to bring up and that would make them really uncomfortable, probably inappropriate. But if you provide that to them in advance, give them a few days to go home and think about it and have them come back in. You could take that questionnaire and spend a few minutes just go through, look at the comments that they’ve made so you now have a guide, an outline for the conversation that you would record.

And then you could turn on the camera and do the interview and capture that. think that should be, that should be, I mean, we’re not yet to the place where that’s a routine thing for us, but I would like for that to be something that we do routinely for clients. we have colleagues, you and I have colleagues who do that thing routinely, who they do video interviews with.

virtually every client record them and that becomes part of the work they do and deliver to the client. Not just trust documents, but the thumb drive that has that interview on it, In multiple copies so it can be shared among other family members.

Ted Gudorf (30:29.035)

Fascinating. At what point in the estate planning process do you introduce this concept and how do you introduce it?

Stan Miller (30:39.426)

Yeah, that’s a great question. so we’ve thought about that a lot. And the way we do it now is we actually let people know before they come in that this is going to be something that we do. Then at the initial client meeting,

when we’ve concluded that initial client meeting conversation, we hand the clients something called a legacy portfolio. It’s a binder that has a number of tabs. So every legacy strategy, some I talked about a few minutes ago, but some I didn’t talk about, they’re all outlined in that legacy portfolio in some detail.

And then we send them home with that. And then we send them a link to a video, our law firm, legacy director recorded a video. It’s like a 45 minute tour of the portfolio where she talks about every one of the strategies. It tells them a little bit about it. And the idea would be that they have it there and they’re able to thumb through it while they’re watching the video.

And then that tees up a conversation that the client will have with our team, the planning team, when they come back in for the design meeting. And so we have a checklist for that design meeting that includes a legacy checklist. that at that second meeting, our team says, you you’ve had the opportunity to look at the portfolio, you’ve watched the video. And now let’s talk about what, which of the strategies really

really struck your fancy, which ones are you interested in pursuing? sometimes it’s just a legacy letter, sometimes it’s more than that. And of course there’s some people who just come in to have a trust done and avoid probate. And our job is not to force anything on people. They get to choose what they want to do and what they don’t want to do. But our job is to make sure that we’ve opened the door in a compelling way so that

Stan Miller (32:57.208)

this is something that interests them, we’re providing a clear path for how to do it. What prompted me to write this book was a frustration I had that I’d had so many conversations over the years with people who really cared about leaving a legacy, not just leaving financial wealth. And I felt that I did not have a good answer to your question, which is what do you do once somebody

tells you they’re interested. And so I thought, you know, if I write a book about it, that’ll force me to organize my thinking and to provide an answer to that question. So I spent about three years working on the book and that was really what motivated the book. I wanted to be able to provide, to be able to put legs on the client’s motivation. I did not want to just have a moment in time where we…

all kind of cried together and I got out to Kleenex and we talked about how we’d love to do something but not have an answer. So now I feel like I have an answer. feel like I actually have multiple answers that can be shaped to the client’s interest. And so now we have a way to talk about this. so this is built into the structure of our planning process.

So every client gets that legacy portfolio. Every client gets the link to the video tour of the legacy portfolio. And every client is given the opportunity to thoughtfully consider which legacy strategy they want to pursue. And they choose not to do it, but we’re giving every client that opportunity that’s built into our process.

Ted Gudorf (34:52.683)

Seems to me in order to be successful, it has to be integrated into the process. Do you find that it significantly or substantially increases the overall cost to the client to do this type of planning?

Stan Miller (35:05.774)

It depends on what they do. If it’s a legacy letter, it doesn’t. We’ve actually worked on that. have a version of the legacy letter in our CRM software, so it’s not difficult at all to create that. So that’s not anything we charge extra for. If our client wants to do more than that, then that’s going to involve more work on our part.

charge extra for that. For example, there are clients that really like the idea of having a video team come to your home or come to your business and do video interviews with you, your family, maybe even employees. Sometimes they’ll bring a drone, they’ll fly it over the business or a farm. We can do that with farms also. And then they’ll take all that footage.

and edit that down to a 15 or 20 minute video, set it to music, and that becomes an heirloom, right, that can be passed on. So that, you to organize that, you know, we’ll charge for that. And the people who do that certainly, you know, charge for that. So there are all kinds of solutions out there. It’s interesting that there are, you’d be surprised really how many people there are out there that have

some kind of legacy solution. They’re not big companies. It’s usually just a person that has a thing they do or a couple guys that do videos or whatever. And part of our job is to be aware of what solutions are available, who those people are, how much they charge for it, and be able to

suggest these solutions to clients and let the client kind of decide, you know, I like this or that, you know, I’m willing to invest this much money in that solution. Now, for example, if you, if you want to do a book, you know, like a real book where the guy comes flies to your hometown and sits with you for a week and does interviews, you know, that’s going to be a 20 or $30 ,000 investment. And we have clients that, that think that’s money very well spent.

Stan Miller (37:30.478)

But other people don’t have the funds to do that. But they’ll spend $2 ,500 to have somebody come do video interviews and edit that. And then we have a lot of people who will do a legacy letter. Or we have people who come sit down and let us interview them. And what we’re doing now is we’re offering that as part of a premium trust package where we do charge something extra for that.

We’re also adding additional drafting language in trust documents that not legally binding language, know what we lawyers call precatory language where it expresses our intent. We’re building that into the trust document. That’s something that we’ve learned from John Warnick who founded the Purposeful Planning Institute. John’s a good friend of mine and he’s developed a whole body.

of language that you can reach into and appropriate and you have to edit some too, but you can put that into a trust document in a way that expresses feelings beyond just what we lawyers feel like we have to do to document proper legal intent. So there’s that also. you know, but yes, all those things do add some.

some work on our part, it requires engagement. It’s not work that, and by the way, I want to comment about this. This is not work that can be commoditized. And so I’m saying now to lawyers and also to financial advisors who I believe can adopt a similar practice in their financial planning practice. I believe this is the antidote.

to obsolescence. At some point, there’s going to be an AI bot out there that can create legal documents that are pretty sophisticated. And there are AI bots that can manage your money pretty well. I know people that have robo accounts now. And they do that because the expense ratio on that’s pretty low. And so

Stan Miller (39:55.704)

They just put their money into a robo account and an AI bot makes investment decisions. But this legacy dimension, don’t think, I guess, I just don’t see that there would ever be a time when an AI bot can do this. I think this requires a human connecting with a human and interacting.

around these issues. And I just don’t think that we can reduce this down to clicking radio buttons in a software program. I think incorporating this dimension into the process of estate planning for estate planning attorneys or financial planning or insurance planning for insurance guys, I think is how we protect ourselves from

this onslaught of artificial intelligence.

Ted Gudorf (40:59.317)

Well, great, Stan. I really appreciate you being with us today. Stan Miller, nationally renowned estate planning attorney, talking today about legacy planning, sharing snippets of his book, Your American Legacy. I can’t thank you enough, Stan. It’s great to see you. Thanks for being with us and sharing all your knowledge and your wisdom. I really appreciate your focus on generosity.

trying to make the world a better place for all of us.

Stan Miller (41:32.686)

It’s been a pleasure, Ted. Thanks for asking.