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Evaluating Your Estate Plan

Kelvin Leibold and Melissa O'Rourke

Summary

Evaluating Your Estate Plan is a core Iowa State University Extension Farm Management program developed and implemented to address the needs of farm families facing estate planning and farm succession challenges. Participants are organized into small groups and assigned cases which groups discuss to apply principles to farm family situations. Pre/post evaluation results showed that 98% have a better idea of how to build an estate planning team; 95% know what information to take when visiting an attorney; and 84% indicated a likelihood of visiting an attorney to revise a will. Program goals: (1) Improve participant understanding of basic estate planning topics (tax, terminology basics and property ownership strategies); (2) increase participant confidence to prepare for, develop and begin implementing estate planning processes; (3) exercise participant´s estate planning communications skills to improve working relationships with professional advisers. The entire package of promotional, educational, and evaluation materials is available at the http://extensionrme.org/funded projects site. Fact sheets developed for the program are posted at the Ag Decision Maker website. Evaluating Your Estate Plan is delivered with a two-person team consisting of an experienced farm management educator and an attorney. Program publicity seeks to overcome reluctance to discuss family farm transition issues. Enrollment is limited to 30 participants to facilitate discussion. The registration fee of $50 covers lunch, refreshments, materials, and marketing. The RME-J5H03845 grant partially funded development and initial program offerings. All post-grant period programs require sponsorship to offset travel and other costs of offering the program.

Details

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