Tangible assets often ignored in estate planning

The following excerpts are from Estate Planning & Appreciating Tangible Assets, Heritage Trusts & Estates Newsletter, Jan./Feb. 2009, at 1:

Estate planners, attorneys and trust officers are not trained to think about fine art and collectibles.  Failing to consider your wealthy clients' tangible property, however, can prove not just a major oversight, but a costly one.  Two economics professors at NYU have even demonstrated that such tangibles generate a solid overall return on investment over time, and do not correlate with stocks, making them a smart wealth diversifier.

Nevertheless, in practice, fiduciaries of all kinds seem to take for granted that their wealthiest clients * * * are living in homes completely devoid of valuable contents. * * *  What, then, should estate planners be doing? * * *

ASK your clients about their interests.  Do they collect anything?  Are they in possession of old family heirlooms? * * *

APPRAISE property for inventory and value management purposes. * * *

PLAN for what comes next [after the client's death]. * * *

MANAGE the collection.  Just as you strive to protect wealth and minimize tax liability by managing the rest of your clients' assets * * * so you must manage the intangibles.

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