Living Your Legacy

Guided conversations for a conscious departure

Photo by Emily Scott

What is Living Your Legacy?

Over the years, Emily Scott has been close to and shared many end-of-life experiences: people of all different ages, circumstances, family/friend dynamics, and feelings about the process of dying. In every case, she has seen how much the care and attention given to personalizing a living will, living trust, endowment, or estate plan matters. Doing so offers comfort, guidance, solutions, support, and love to the people who must make decisions at a time when they are most in grief and often least able.

Photo by Sonya Yruel

Wrestling with end-of-life planning and the eventual estate management is not easy. Emily’s process for legacy planning transforms what can be challenging into an experience of warmth, creativity, and comfort. The result is a legacy plan that is uniquely yours – personal, imaginative, and loving. Through this process, Emily Scott coaches her clients to develop a legacy plan that is tied directly to their goals, values, and passions and that expresses who and what has made their life worth living.

Talk to Emily About Legacy Exploration

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Emily Scott helps by…

Beginning a conversation about your legacy and the people, causes, values, and priorities in your life
Guiding you to legacy plan without knowing end-of-life timing and who or what will be in your life at that time
Giving you a safe space to fully express your intentions, interests, beliefs, and feelings in your end-of-life planning
Combining practical, problem-solving with the heart, making end-of-life planning deeply personal

The Process

Emily Scott starts by deep listening as this topic requires a keen ear and an empathetic sounding board . Together, Emily and her client talk through a wide range of end-of-life planning questions and decisions. This conversation helps illuminate who and what matters to the client and how their vision, values, and experiences hold meaning for them. Through these conversations and her subsequent research, Emily paints a comprehensive estate planning picture of the issues surrounding her client’s legacy.

Next, Emily explores different strategies to celebrate and honor the relationships in her client's life. She helps her clients consider different possibilities for planned giving and discuss how to make those choices personal, creative, and loving. Finally, Emily provides a full report detailing the findings and dilemmas that emerged during the discovery phase. She includes a framework of solutions and action items that estate lawyers can use to make this comprehensive endowment and legacy plan legal.

"Emily threads needles so well. She is the full package of heart and mind and some of the best ears around. Combine that with how fiercely and fully she operates, and you have a godsend of an advocate, advisor and steward. Planning the close of a life is not for sissies, but there's great beauty awaiting anyone who does so, especially with Emily's help."

-Dr. BJ Miller, Palliative Care Specialist
Zen Hospice Former Executive Director
Author and TED speaker

Featured

Case Study: Steve

Family Matters

Steve and his wife are in good health and have built a successful consulting company. He has two adult daughters from his first marriage, two adult sons with his second wife, grandchildren, siblings, nieces and nephews. There are some familial challenges, health challenges, and multi-generational challenges that Steve wanted to review before he redid his estate plan.

Case Study: Diane & Jan

Finding the Story

Diane and Jan had an estate plan that was created 8 years ago. In that time, they acquired more assets, adopted two dogs, supported different causes, and had altered relationships with some family members and friends. Together with Emily, they discussed these different elements of their lives and how these changes affected their feelings and intentions. The ensuing personal conversation covered a lot of ground by looking at the alignments and disconnects with their head and heart. Questions of taking care of the surviving spouse, equitable giving to family members, next generation funding, asset distribution, philanthropic bequests, honoring friendships, and a host of other issues and concerns were discussed.

Case Study: Ilsa

The Difference Between Conversation and Confrontation

Ilsa and her partner, Pat, have been together for over two decades and are a loving couple who are compatible in many ways. They both have successful careers and because of their age difference, Ilsa had some concerns about how each would be affected by the other’s death in regards to their assets. They had very different perspectives when it came to their assets, their respective families’ financial pictures, and their end-of-life planning. Ilsa knew she had to create a plan, but shied away from having a conversation with Pat about it because of their differences.

Talk to Emily About Your Legacy