Recently, a friend handed me a nice little 50-page pamphlet entitled “The Family Love Letter” by estate planning attorney John Scroggin. It is a well-written self-completion booklet that helps you organize where your important documents are located and provides a way to list your important people and advisors.

I have written about this topic several times over the years. However, there was one idea in the pamphlet that caught my attention. Do you have or have you ever heard of an “ethical will?”

Scroggin said, “Increasingly, clients are adding ethical wills to their list of estate planning documents.” It is not a formal document. It doesn’t follow any particular format. The idea is to express your values, unique personality, family structure and thoughts from one generation to another.

What are your values? Have you ever written them? Have you expressed them succinctly to your family?

Again, Scroggin said one of the best descriptions is “ethical wills are windows into the souls of those who write them. It is this that makes them so cherished by family members from generation to generation.”

The goals in writing an ethical will might be to aid in the estate planning process, to leave an intangible legacy, or just for personal satisfaction.

So what might be in the ethical will? Here are few thought-provoking questions:

• When I am gone, what will my family learn from my life experiences?

• What are the most important things I have learned in my lifetime?

• What is the most important thing I have done in my lifetime?

• How do I hope my family will use their inheritance from me in their lives?

• What are the important values I would like to pass on to my family?

• How would I like to be remembered?

These questions sound pretty easy at first reading, but not so easy if you consider your heartfelt thoughts and principles.

When you have to express them in writing, you might want to take serious time to reflect. Most of us have so many experiences — how do you narrow them down to just a few?

Leaving a legacy is so important. Of course, the best legacy is the example of the life we have led. It is possible that our example might be misunderstood. The ethical will might give you a chance to change that misunderstanding or at least clarify it. 

Legacies don’t just happen. They require action. They require that we do something. Something noteworthy. Something worth remembering. So, what have you done worth remembering? Does anyone know about it? Do the people you care about most know about it? How would you express this to them?

Your family name is also important. You might ask yourself what did you do with your father’s name and what do you want your offspring to do with it?

Contact Tom at 1030 Seminary St. Ste. D, Napa CA 94559, 254-0155, fax 254-0158 or e-mail suntrm@aol.com.