Services · What this actually means

Inheritance and legacy planning

Your documents, your accounts, and your beneficiary forms should all say the same thing, and your family should know exactly where to find them.

Who does this all dayDavid SchaefferDavid SchaefferKyle JacobsKyle Jacobs
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David Schaeffer has watched the same thing happen in thousands of meetings: most families have the wishes, they just never said them out loud. A family signs a will and a trust, the folder goes in a drawer, and everybody exhales. Then a decade goes by. Accounts move. People marry, divorce, and pass away. The folder does not know any of it.

Inheritance and legacy planning here is the work of keeping that folder true. The signing is the easy part. The checking, the matching, and the conversation you keep having are what make it a plan.

It is one of the three things this firm does, alongside healthcare and retirement income, and it is the one families put off longest.

What it is

What inheritance and legacy planning actually means

Start with the piece most people have backwards. As David puts it, a will does not avoid probate. It is instructions for the judge who runs it. Probate is the court process that settles an estate, and the will only tells that court what you wanted. If staying out of court was the goal, the will alone was never going to get you there.

A large share of your money never reads the will at all. Retirement accounts, life insurance, and payable-on-death bank accounts pass by the beneficiary form on file, and when the form and the trust disagree, the form usually wins.

So we work in three steps: Prepare, Protect, Preserve. Prepare is the inventory: every account, policy, title, and login in one place. Protect is the legal side, including whether the trust is actually funded and whether every beneficiary form still matches what you would choose today. Preserve is the money itself, making sure something is left to pass on once your own retirement is paid for.

The Three Colors of Money is how we map what gets passed on. Safe money, income money, and growth money each behave differently when they change hands, and there is a fourth color now, Purple, for the house. Your family does not inherit one pile. They inherit four, with four different tax outcomes.

We do not practice law and we do not prepare tax returns. We quarterback with your estate attorney and your CPA so every document, account, and form finally agrees, and then we look again next year. A plan is a document plus a conversation plus a review.

Why people call us

Sound familiar?

  • You have a will and a trust, and both are old enough that you cannot say with confidence what is in them.
  • You are not sure the beneficiary form on your IRA still names the person you would name today.
  • You refinanced the house a few years back, and nobody ever told you whether it went back into the trust.
  • Your children are in very different situations, and split it evenly is not really the answer.
  • If something happened tomorrow, no one in your family could find the accounts, let alone the passwords.
How we do it

What happens when you sit down with us

Book a Discovery DayAbout an hour, across a desk in Scottsdale, Mesa, or Las Vegas, or on Zoom. Discovery Day, not decision day. You are there to find out where you actually stand.
Prepare: we inventory before we adviseEvery account, policy, deed, and digital login goes onto one list. Most families have never seen their own estate written on a single page, and the list by itself changes the conversation.
Protect: we read the forms against the documentsWe check each beneficiary designation against your will and your trust, and whether the trust holds what you think it holds. You leave with a short list of fixes and who has to make each one.
Preserve: we make sure there is something to pass onYour income comes first. We build the paycheck side of your retirement so the inheritance is what is left over by design rather than by accident.
We quarterback, then we reviewYour attorney drafts the documents and your CPA handles the return. We keep both pointed at the same plan, and we sit down with you once a year to catch what changed.
Book a Discovery Day

or call any office

Before your Discovery Day

What to bring

  • The will and the trust, however old they are. The old ones are the ones worth re-reading.
  • A list of your accounts and where they live, even if it is handwritten on a legal pad.
  • The most recent statement for each retirement account, so we can see the beneficiary line.
  • The deed to your home, plus any paperwork from a refinance.
  • The names of your estate attorney and your CPA, if you have them.
The people

Who does this all day

David Schaeffer, Founder & CEODavid SchaefferFounder & CEO · ScottsdaleView card →Kyle Jacobs, Senior Advisor, Certified Medicare Planner®Kyle JacobsSenior Advisor · Certified Medicare Planner® · ScottsdaleView card →
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Your Discovery Day

Takes about a minute. Adam from our office calls you back to set the time with the right advisor, in the office nearest you or on Zoom, whichever you prefer.

  • About an hour with an advisor.
  • Bring whatever is keeping you up at night. That is the agenda.
  • Discovery Day, not decision day. You decide when you are ready.

Rather talk now? (602) 281-3898

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Questions people ask

Straight answers

Does a will avoid probate?

No. A will is instructions for the court, not a way around it. Staying out of probate is done through titling, trusts, and beneficiary designations, which is exactly the paperwork we check.

I already have a trust. Is there anything left to do?

Usually quite a lot. A trust only controls what is actually inside it, and assets drift out over the years. The gap we find most often is a home that came out of the trust during a refinance and was never recorded back in.

My beneficiary forms are old. Does the will fix them?

It does not. Retirement accounts, life insurance, and payable-on-death bank accounts pass by the form on file with the company, and your will does not override it. Updating a form takes minutes and is often the highest-value thing a family can do in an afternoon.

What happens to my IRA when my children inherit it?

Most adult children are designated beneficiaries who are not eligible designated beneficiaries, and the IRS requires them to withdraw the entire balance by December 31 of the year containing the 10th anniversary of the owner's death, often in their own peak earning years. A surviving spouse, a minor child, a disabled or chronically ill individual, and anyone not more than 10 years younger than the owner are treated differently.

Do you write the will and the trust?

No. We are not a law firm and not a CPA firm. Your attorney drafts the documents, your CPA handles the tax side, and we build the game plan that keeps them working from the same version of your wishes.