Planning for Your Legacy: Estate Planning & Strategic Philanthropy

Sometimes charitable planning conversations start in the wrong place. A tax strategy emerges, and the family's goals are then reverse-engineered around it. This session reverses that process. Using a practical five-step framework, Mariska guides participants through the process of clarifying the legacy, building the estate plan, planning the tax strategy, selecting the appropriate giving vehicle, and coordinating implementation. Along the way, participants will see how family objectives, legal structures, tax considerations, and philanthropic goals operate as an interconnected system, where decisions in one area inevitably affect the others.

The session explores the planning concepts that matter most, including how donation tax credits function across income levels, why gifts of appreciated securities often outperform cash donations, when charitable gifts should be aligned with liquidity events, and how to evaluate corporate versus personal giving strategies. Three detailed case studies will bring these concepts to life. Each case contrasts a client's existing charitable strategy with a more effective alternative, quantifying the retirement, tax, and estate consequences so participants can clearly see the impact of thoughtful planning decisions.
Learning Objectives

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

-Lead charitable planning discussions that begin with donor intention rather than tax outcomes by identifying who should benefit, what values or causes should be supported, when gifts should occur, and the level of control a donor wishes to retain before recommending a charitable structure.
-Evaluate and quantify the tax consequences of competing charitable strategies, including gifts of appreciated securities versus cash, lifetime giving versus charitable bequests, corporate versus personal donations, and donations coordinated with significant liquidity events.
-Match charitable giving vehicles to a donor's circumstances and develop an implementation plan by assessing planned gifts in light of the donor's tax capacity, liquidity needs, philanthropic objectives, and desired level of control, while coordinating the advisors required to execute the strategy.