My dad died a few years ago. The week after his death is a complete blur to me. Somehow, we arranged for his cremation and put together a memorial service at a Jewish funeral home near his house.

I have no idea how all of these arrangements were made. I was useless in my grief.

Someone had the clarity of mind to make all these arrangements; I think it must have been my step-mom, Amy.

I imagine that making decisions for her in those few days was extremely difficult, if not impossible.

And there’s no way to know if we were making smart decisions.

Did we pay too much for the service? The flowers? Did we have options we didn’t consider or did we just go with the “traditional” because we couldn’t think beyond that?

Yesterday, I interviewed Pam Vetter who is an end of life celebrant and she opened my eyes to so many things I know we didn’t think about at my dad’s death.

Pam works with families to create a personalized end of life celebrations. Even more than that though, she guides families through the decisions about how to handle after-death arrangements so you know you are making smart choices, not getting taken advantage of during a time of grief, and can focus on healing.

Pam came to this work after her sister’s death. Her family wanted to create a personal memorial service for her sister, but the church pastor wouldn’t allow it and her family’s healing was disrupted by the cold, non-personal service. Pam got trained as a celebrant so she could make sure no other family faced the uncertainty, pain and bewilderment her family did after her sister’s death.

You can hear my interview with Pam on our Family Wealth Health and Happiness call if you are a Personal Family Lawyer Family Wealth VIP Membership client. You’ll be receiving the CD in the mail in January.

You can reach Pam on the web or by calling (818) 313-9009. Whenever you experience the death of a loved one, I recommend you call Pam Vetter or a local celebrant in your area before calling anyone else.

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It’s the end of the year and if you aren’t thinking about giving, you should be. And not just because it feels good to your heart, but because it will feel good to your pocket next April when you go to file your taxes.

This week and next week, I’m going to give you an overview of a few things you should be thinking about when it comes to giving.

Giving can come in two forms – giving to your loved ones and giving to charity.

Giving to your loved ones may not have meaningful income tax benefits, but it can have substantial estate tax benefits. Estate tax is the tax paid by your loved ones at your death if your estate is more than the amount allowed by the government, currently $2,000,000 in 2007. And, when you are adding up your estate, don’t forget to include your life insurance!

People are always surprised to hear that life insurance is subject to tax when they die because they’ve heard it’s tax free. And, it is INCOME tax free. It’s not ESTATE tax free.

Giving to charity has both income and estate tax benefits.

Income tax benefits because come tax time you get to subtract from your income any gifts you make to qualified charities and estate tax benefits because gifts you make decrease the size of your estate.

So, if you’ve got more than $2,000,000 and you are not married or more than $4,000,000 and you are married (assuming you’ve got your estate plan set up right), you want to start thinking about giving assets away to decrease the size of your estate.

It’s not too late to be thinking about it for 2007. But, you’ve got to hurry.

If you’ve got money that will be taxed at your death, it’s a whole lot better for your overall family wealth if you start passing it down while you are living.

You can give away $1mm during your lifetime to your loved ones. Anything you give over that is taxed at 45%. BUT, the government lets you give away $12,000 per year to as many people as you want and it doesn’t count against the $1mm you can give away during life.

So, what does all of this mean for you? Well, if you’ve got more than $2,000,000 in assets, here’s what you should be doing:

1. Give $12,000 per year to as many of your loved ones as you want. There’s no tax to pay on this gift. The more you can pass down to lower generations, the greater your family wealth. However, you do not want to give your kids $12,000 and just put it into a custodial account. That can be a bad idea because your kids will get access to the money in their custodial accounts at 18 or maybe 21 … they won’t be ready and neither will you.

We had some clients who did better than they thought they would on some investments they had put in a custodial account for their kid and they ended up with $500,000 in their kid’s account when he turned 18 … not good!

You want to give this $12,000 in a protected trust your kids don’t control until they (and you) are ready and you want to make sure it stays protected from potential future divorces or lawsuits. Call your Personal Family Lawyer and ask about a Family Wealth Passage Trust for your kids OR talk to your parents about setting one up for you.

2. Give as much as you can to charity. For each dollar you give to charity, you can deduct that dollar from your taxable income in April 2008 and it decreases the size of your estate. You cannot deduct donations greater than 50% of your 2007 income. If you are over 70 ½, you do have an opportunity to donate up to $100,000 from your IRA without this income limitation. Contact your Personal Family Lawyer for more information.

If you are in a position to make substantial gifts to charity each year (more than $100,000) and you want to retain control of the money you are giving, want to involve your children in giving or just want to manage your giving better, you will want to establish a private foundation. It’s not too late to do this for 2007, but again, you’ve got to move very fast and expect to pay some rush fees. Again, contact your Personal Family Lawyer to get moving on this one.

If you are looking for some great charities to support this year, click on the links below to give to two of my favorites. I’ll match all donations made up to a total of $2,500 on each site. So please give!

I’m raising $10,000 to restock a Los Angeles school with books through the Wonder of Reading program.

I’m raising $15,000 to build a school in Nepal that will educate hundreds of children through a Room to Read.

Together, we can leave the world a better place.

Love and Gratitude,

Alexis

Growing up, my family didn’t have much financial wealth. One of the impacts of that was that I knew I would have to go to an in-state, public school for college. My parents could not afford to send me out of state and I didn’t really believe I could qualify for scholarships. What that meant is that I stopped trying very hard in high school (it didn’t help that I also fell in with a bad crowd). I knew that I only had to do well enough to get into a State school, which back then was not that difficult.Yesterday, Harvard announced a new initiative that will give kids growing up with limited financial means new hope of being able to attend Harvard despite financial limitations.

Parents, make sure you share this information with your kids. If they believe it’s something attainable, they are more likely to strive for it.

“In a sweeping new financial aid initiative announced today, Harvard said it would significantly reduce the expected contributions from middle- and upper-class families and eliminate loans for all students.

Undergraduates whose families make between $120,000 and $180,000 per year will be asked to pay 10 percent of their yearly income in tuition, the University said in a statement.

The program expands on the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative, which in 2004 eliminated tuition costs for families making less than $60,000 a year.

In a conference call with reporters this afternoon, University President Drew G. Faust said that the program, which will increase College’s financial aid grant budget by $22 million—more than 20 percent—will be paid for using a variety of sources, including Faust’s discretionary fund and funds from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences… ” — The Harvard Crimson

My kitty Ellie was hit by a car last weekend; she died instantly.

I found out when a neighbor came into my house to let me know there was a cat in my driveway. When I went outside, there was Ellie, laying on her side. She looked like she was sleeping, but she was gone.

I was devastated.

And then I had to tell my kids and decide whether they should see her.

I decided that they should have a chance to say goodbye and I carried her in my arms to where they were playing.

When I was a kid, our dog died. I don’t remember my parents helping me to process the grief at all. What I do remember is that, like my kids, I didn’t express sadness immediately. I didn’t really know what to say.

My parents took that to mean I didn’t care and said words that led me to believe there was something wrong with me for 1) not noticing our dog was gone earlier and 2) not feeling immediate sadness that he was gone.

Looking back now, I realize this was just one case where my parents had a lot of thoughts about the ways I “should” feel about things.

That made it difficult for me later in life to discern how I did feel v. how I should feel.

And, I’m sure it contributed to the fact that even now I have a difficult time expressing my feelings with my mom.

When my kids saw me carrying Ellie and I told them what happened, they didn’t really seem that upset. They had a friend over and wanted to keep playing. They comforted me momentarily and then returned to their game. (side note: their friend’s dad was over when the whole thing happened and was fine with me telling my kids while he was there).

Had I judged their reactions in the moment, I would have done just what my parents did and made them feel as if there was something wrong with them for not feeling sadness or acting more sad that Ellie was gone. All that would have done is made them feel bad and made it very unlikely they would feel safe expressing their sadness later.

I didn’t comment at all on their feelings. I just let them know I was sad and let them keep playing.

Later on in the evening, when their friend had left, Kaia and Noah started asking a lot of questions about Ellie and I asked them to each share what they loved about Ellie the most. It was then that the tears fell for both of them.

By giving them their own time and space to process Ellie’s death, I gave my kids the dignity and respect of dealing with their feelings in their own way and in their own time. Sometimes that’s hard to do because we have expectations of “the way things should be” in the moment. But if we can take a step back and allow every person to have his or her own experience and accept that expression exactly as it is, our own ability to be authentic in the moment will grow stronger.