Family Legacies

Like a Library Burning . . .

When someone dies, they take all their memories with them.  This has been aptly compared to a library burning to the ground.  Like the famed library at Alexandria which, according to legend, was destroyed by fire resulting in the loss of thousands of years of human memory.  Don’t let that happen to your family legacies.  The real family legacies we leave our heirs will be more about the memories and histories than anything we do financially or legally.

Years ago a colleague and friend, Dennis Stack, shared with me his quest to help document such important histories before they are destroyed by the ravages of age.  What started as a paperback workbook is now a very sophisticated online tool, which you can find at LegacyStories.Org.

Here is their story:

The Family Connection

After a lifetime of working hard for the benefit of your family, you want the inheritance you leave to be worth more than the dollar amount attached to it.  Studies have shown that families who are linked to their forbears through stories are stronger as a unit, with  individual members exhibiting a higher sense of well-being.  However, with the unending advancement of technology and the decreasing regularity of multi-generational households, sitting around the dinner table and sharing stories has become a thing of the past.  When estate planning is done in such a vacuum, even if your assets set up to take care of your family over time, the result will be devoid of the heart and history that went into the construction of it.

You need much more than just legal documents to pass the real legacy on to your heirs.

Much like the legendary Library at Alexandria which housed countless volumes of priceless information, your life has been built with the hard-earned lessons and experiences that have been instrumental in making you who you are.  Like the intellectual treasures that were lost when that library burned, your history will be lost once your memory fades and you are gone unless you have somehow preserved it.

That is why Dennis Stack left what he calls “the sterile world of finance” to begin Legacy Stories.Org.  This unique program is a sophisticated solution for passing down both a financial inheritance and a historical inheritance.  Some people are reluctant to record their stories because they feel they lack oration or writing skills.  To address that concern, Legacy Stories employs experts in multiple fields including memoir writing, genealogy, digitization and more.  Using the award-winning technology of Legacy Stories.org, you will be able to reach across geographical and generational gaps to ignite family interaction and connection.  Such a legacy is worth leaving.

Family Legacies

LegacyStories.Org has a mission to preserve the past, enrich the present, and inspire the future.  When your descendants know where they come from and the kind of strength that lies behind them, they are empowered to move forward in the same spirit that brought them to this point.  This inter-generational connectivity is unique and binding like nothing else.  Financial wealth received by inheritance is more likely to be preserved and perpetuated when driven by a family legacy rather than a bank balance.  Heirs become part of an ongoing family narrative, knowing their family history and pushing to leave their children the same legacy.

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord:  And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.  Malachi 4:5-6.

Your financial net worth is nearly nothing compared to your personal worth as a human life.  Leave your family with more than the question “how much?”  Leave them with the answers to the questions “who?”, “why?” and “what can I do for my family?”.  Legacy Stories.Org is your guide to leaving an actual legacy.

I enthusiastically embrace and encourage you to use the powerful tools at LegacyStories.org.