An Estate Plan Is Your Script to a Lasting Legacy
“We are all storytellers, and we are the stories we tell,” wrote American psychologist Dan McAdams. Narrative thinking refers to how we view our own role in the story of our lives. It is a more formal way of describing “main character energy” or “main character syndrome,” two terms that originated on social media to describe when someone puts themselves first and takes control of their narrative.
Viewing yourself as the main character in the movie of your life is associated with greater psychological well-being. It can make you feel more competent, autonomous, and effective. One way to take control of your story is to create an estate plan, enabling you to write a script for your legacy.
An Estate Plan as Your Legacy Script
Storytelling is an art as old as humanity itself. Our brains are designed to think in narratives. We cannot resist a good story that reels us in with intriguing characters and develops into a tension-filled middle and a satisfying ending. From bedtime stories as children to Netflix binges as adults, our predisposition toward narratives is a deep-seated human impulse.
As natural-born storytellers, we instinctively understand that every story needs certain dramatic ingredients to succeed. Screenwriters typically identify three elements—characters, conflict, and resolution—as key to crafting compelling narratives.
An estate plan can also be broken down into these storytelling elements to help you visualize your life story and write your legacy script.
Characters
If you are the main character, or protagonist, in your own movie, then your loved ones are the supporting characters. In estate planning terms, they may be the beneficiaries—those who stand to inherit your money and property.
On-screen and in an estate plan, supporting characters are just as important as the main character. They add depth to the story and are integral to the main character’s experiences. Without them, the narrative would fall apart.
When you think of a movie with just one main character, Tom Hanks in Cast Away may come to mind. But even Hanks’s character in Cast Away has flashbacks to his life from before the plane crash that color his experience on the island and motivate him to seek rescue.
The best characters, whether main or supporting, have fully developed backstories, goals, and needs. We become invested in characters we can relate to as we learn more about their lives and the experiences that shaped them.
As estate planning attorneys, getting to know not only you, the main character in your movie, but also your beneficiaries, the supporting characters in your life who stand to inherit from you, is essential to understanding what motivates you and how we can best plan for your future.
Conflict
Conflict is the foundation of any good story. It identifies the challenges the characters face, introduces tension, and forces the main character to take actions that move the story toward resolution.
Conflicts are by their nature unpleasant and uncomfortable, which is what makes them so impactful. They are ultimately what allow viewers to become emotionally invested in a story and force the main character to grow and evolve. A conflict does not have to be bad, but it is hard to tell an engaging story when the characters have no obstacles to overcome.
No family is conflict-free. There may be an antagonist in your family, such as an individual with a substance abuse disorder who requires special planning considerations. Maybe there is a scandalous backstory, like a child from an earlier, secret marriage who now figures into your estate plan. Or it could be more mundane interfamily squabbles over things like money, favoritism, and resentment that rear their ugly head.
Applying the narrative element of conflict to estate planning means exploring potential issues in your family story and how they might play out in the future so that we can effectively plan around them.
Resolution
A story’s payoff comes in the form of the resolution, when the characters overcome obstacles, tie up loose ends, and end the story. The resolution usually takes up very little screen time relative to the time spent fleshing out the characters and conflicts, but it is what everything has been leading up to.
Writing a strong estate plan, like writing a strong resolution, can be tricky. It involves coming up with an ending that ties the story’s other elements together and is emotionally satisfying. There is nothing wrong with a plot twist—as long as the resolution provides a sense of closure.
The resolution of the estate planning process is a set of tools, like a will, trust, power of attorney, and medical directive. These documents give you peace of mind that your legacy is secure and your loved ones will be cared for after you are gone, leaving no chance of lingering uncertainty.
What Is Your Story?
We all have stories to tell. When you add those stories up over the course of a lifetime, you get something that looks much like a movie.
A recent study found that people who view themselves as a major character in their life story, rather than a minor character, are more likely to pursue goals that are personally meaningful and align with their values.[1]
If you see yourself as the main character in your life’s movie, the question is, who’s writing the script?
Your estate plan, like your life story, is unique. We can help you write a plan that resolves family conflicts and provides for the supporting characters in your life. Ultimately, though, it is your story to tell.
It is not too late to write the perfect ending: get in touch with an estate planning attorney.
Wealth, Legacy, and Family Drama: Inside The Descendants
Picture this: You are standing on a piece of land that has been in your family for generations and has been handed down through a trust. The land is imbued with memories from your childhood, your children, and family gatherings. You want to keep the land in the family for years to come. However, the family trust is set to end soon, and when it does, you and your cousins will each own a share of the property.
At that point, the land will likely be subdivided, sold off, and developed. You look at old photos of your family on the land and convince yourself that is not what they would have wanted, and it is not what you want either. Other family members want to sell, however, and cash in.
What can you do, legally, to protect the land while keeping your family members at bay?
The Descendants Movie Showcases Trustee Challenges
The above scenario is the plot of the 2011 movie The Descendants, starring George Clooney and based on a novel of the same name.
Although fictional, The Descendants has some basis in fact and reflects a common estate planning challenge that many families face when attempting to hold and manage assets (accounts and property) for multiple generations.
Clooney plays Matt King, a Hawaii attorney and sole trustee of a family trust established by his great-great-grandparents, a Hawaiian princess and an American banker. The trust’s most valuable asset is a 25,000-acre parcel of pristine coastland on the island of Kauai. The land has been in the family since the 1860s, but the trust is set to end in seven years.
Matt, one of about 20 beneficiaries of the trust, is not reliant on it for income and does not want to sell the land. However, many of his cousins have squandered their inheritance and need the money.
Worried that distributing the land to his cousins would be a “trainwreck”—alluding to the likelihood that the co-owning cousins would end up in a complicated and costly partition lawsuit—Matt must decide what to do with the land.
Right before he is about to sell to a developer, Matt has a change of heart. He decides against selling the family’s “piece of paradise,” which his ancestors would not have wanted developed; he then has seven years to find a way to preserve it and the legacy imbued in it.
Matt’s decision sets the stage for litigation between him and his cousins, who prefer to sell.
Some Lessons about Trusts from The Descendants
The author of The Descendants reportedly drew inspiration from family trusts that were in the news around the time she was writing the novel.[2] To this day, large pieces of land are still held in Hawaii by so-called Ali’i trusts that were set up more than a century ago to hold the assets of Hawaiian royalty.
The Descendants offers estate planning lessons about issues like a trustee’s power to act unilaterally, the duties that trustees owe to trust beneficiaries, problems associated with co-ownership of valuable undeveloped land, and more.
- Whenever property must be distributed among multiple family members, like the land held in Matt King’s family trust, the potential for family conflict exists. The “trainwreck” that Matt King envisions centers on the likelihood of his cousins fighting over how to divide their interests in the land when they become co-owners. This situation can put tremendous pressure on a family trustee, especially one who is also a beneficiary, to remain objective in the face of family demands.
- While it is not specified in the movie how Matt became sole successor trustee, multigenerational trusts need a mechanism for selecting successor trustees who can take over for the initial trustees and those successors who follow them.
- Matt, as the sole trustee, has a legal duty to carry out the trust’s purpose in a way that serves the beneficiaries’ best interests. When he asks his cousins what they view as being in their best interests, almost all of them want to sell. However, just because a beneficiary says they want something or consents to a trustee’s proposed action does not mean they cannot later sue the trustee for a perceived breach of duty if their decision was bad in hindsight.
- A third-party professional trustee or co-trustee may be better suited than a family member to navigate the types of real-life family inheritance issues depicted in The Descendants. A corporate trustee from a bank or trust company can also provide continuity over multiple generations.
- The person who sets up a trust and transfers their accounts and property to it should be clear about their intentions so that future heirs do not have to wrestle with the type of decision that Matt agonized over.
Write a Legacy Script for Your Descendants
You do not have to be the descendant of Hawaiian royalty to struggle with the sorts of estate planning quandaries that Matt King faces in The Descendants, and it does not have to be a piece of land you are trying to protect. It could be any assets that are placed in a trust and accumulate wealth for successive generations.
The longer the duration being planned for, the greater the potential challenges. Let us help you write a legacy script that honors your family’s past and secures the financial well-being of your future beneficiaries.
Lessons in Estate Planning from Rain Man
Rain Man is one of the most iconic American movies of the 1980s. Starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman, it won four Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and was the highest-grossing film of 1988.
Although secondary to the main plot, several estate planning threads run through Rain Man, including those related to trusts, beneficiaries, and how to plan for children who have very different personalities and needs.
Two Brothers and an Inheritance
Charlie Babbitt (Cruise), the estranged son of a millionaire, is dismayed to learn that his late father, Sanford Babbitt, left him only a ’49 Buick Roadmaster and some rose bushes. The rest of his father’s $3 million estate was put in a trust for the benefit of a mystery person.
That person turns out to be Raymond Babbitt (Hoffman), Charlie’s long-lost, autistic-savant brother who is institutionalized at a facility for people with developmental disabilities. The trustee of the trust, Dr. Bruner, is the director of the facility and Raymond’s doctor.
Charlie tries to convince Dr. Bruner that he is entitled to half the money in the trust. When that strategy fails, Charlie takes Raymond out of the facility without permission in an effort to use him as a bargaining chip.
On a weeklong road trip from Cincinnati to Charlie’s home in Los Angeles, Charlie bonds with his quirky brother and has a change of heart. Upon arriving in Los Angeles, Charlie finds that he is more interested in caring for Raymond than getting the money and gives up his fight for the inheritance.
Estate Planning Issues and Lessons
For parents, ensuring that children are provided for in an estate plan is top of mind, but estate planning is not one-size-fits-all. What makes sense for one child may not be suitable for another.
This is one lesson we can learn from Sanford Babbitt and the different treatment his sons receive in his estate plan: you are under no legal obligation to provide equally for your children. Indeed, equal treatment may not be in their best interests.
When a Child Cannot Handle Their Inheritance
Both Charlie and Raymond get different inheritances, both in what they receive and in whether they receive it outright or in trust, motivated by different factors.
We learn in the movie that Charlie spent time in jail and he and his father had a falling out. Reading between the lines, it seems that Sanford viewed Charlie as too immature to handle a large inheritance. He may have thought, as many parents do in his situation, that a large inheritance would only further enable Charlie to follow the wrong path.
Raymond’s neurodivergent condition requires professional care in an institutional setting. This is clearly why Sanford placed money for him in a trust and named a doctor as trustee who would ensure his special needs were met for the rest of his life.
We are not sure what type of trust Sanford created for Raymond or what special instructions (if any) were imposed on the trustee. In real life, the trust may have been structured as a special needs trust, which can benefit a disabled individual without jeopardizing their eligibility for government assistance.
Sharing Information Before Death Can Reduce Conflicts
While Sanford probably could not have predicted that Charlie would find Raymond and hold him for ransom, he could reasonably have anticipated, based on Charlie’s history, that Charlie would go looking for the money and that trouble would follow. He could have avoided trouble by sharing his inheritance plans with Charlie before he died. Instead, the news came as a total shock to Charlie and might have pushed him to act irrationally.
Likewise, Charlie’s surprise at learning about a brother he did not know existed set the stage for dramatics befitting a Hollywood blockbuster. In hindsight, things worked out between the Babbitt brothers. In reality, most parents would want to avoid such theatrics.
Parents have reasons for keeping personal information from their children. However, secrecy should be weighed against the explosive power of revelation, especially if the parents will no longer be around to explain the motivation behind their actions.
Using an Estate Plan to Bring Family Together
Careful estate planning can not only help stave off family conflicts but also strengthen familial bonds. Whether a child has a disability or a track record of worrisome behavior, or the parents simply want to instill their values in their children, a trust can have provisions that guide beneficiaries toward a specific desired outcome or deter bad behaviors.
Instead of cutting Charlie out of the trust, for example, Sanford could have structured the trust to benefit both of his sons and demanded that Charlie only receive distributions if he helped to care for Raymond. Becoming active in Raymond’s life could have incentivized Charlie to take a more mature course of action while bringing the brothers together.
Rain Man has a happy ending, with Charlie returning Raymond to Dr. Bruner and promising to visit him. But happy endings are not nearly as common in life as they are in Hollywood, and this happy ending was mostly accidental. Imagine the drama that may have been avoided if Sanford had stated that Charlie could benefit from the trust if he just spent time with his brother, got to know him, and looked after him.
Write Your Legacy Script with Help from an Estate Planning Attorney
Rain Man won Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Director, showing the magic that can result when all the elements of a movie come together.
Bringing a successful estate plan to fruition, like making a successful movie, requires a collective effort. If you are the author of your legacy script and the star of your life’s movie, then think of us as the director, working behind the scenes to interpret the script and maintain the creative vision throughout the process, from preproduction meetings to the final edit. To create or update your estate plan, please get in touch with us to schedule a meeting.
[1] Eric W. Dolan, Seeing yourself as a main character boosts psychological well-being, study finds, PsyPost (July 20, 2024), https://www.psypost.org/seeing-yourself-as-a-main-character-boosts-psychological-well-being-study-finds/#google_vignette.
[2] Julia Flynn Siler, ‘The Descendants’ Aims to Lay Down the Law in Hawaii, The Wall Street J. (Nov. 26, 2011), https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-SEB-68005.