Family Legacy Process · Meeting One
Guarantees & Opportunities
A guided conversation about what this family’s wealth should protect, and what it should make possible.
Before we begin
A note before we begin.
Your Libretto plan already provides a transparent, comprehensive view of the family’s resources, priorities, and long-term financial capacity. This workbook is designed to help the family take the next step: clarifying what those resources are ultimately intended to protect and make possible.
This is not a worksheet about legal documents, trust provisions, distribution amounts, or property transactions. It is a guided conversation about purpose, stewardship, opportunity, responsibility, and the kind of legacy the family hopes to build over the next 100 years.
The guiding question
What is this wealth for?
Our meeting at a glance
| Time | Topic | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| 0:00–0:05 | Welcome and purpose | Establish a shared stewardship frame for the conversation |
| 0:05–0:15 | Shared planning context | Review the existing Libretto plan at a high level so everyone begins from the same picture |
| 0:15–0:25 | Shared language | Define guarantees, opportunities, and guardrails |
| 0:25–0:45 | What we will protect | Identify the things family members should always have access to in seasons of genuine need |
| 0:45–1:00 | What we will make possible | Identify opportunities that build faith, calling, capability, generosity, and contribution |
| 1:00–1:10 | Generosity with wisdom | Explore conditions and boundaries that preserve dignity, responsibility, and unity |
| 1:10–1:15 | Summary and next steps | Confirm themes, open questions, and preparation for the next meeting |
Before the conversation
Shared language.
These three words carry most of the weight in this meeting, so we define them before we use them.
Guarantees
Guarantees are foundational supports intended to protect dignity, safety, health, and the ability to recover from genuine hardship.
AskWhat should no member of this family have to face alone?
Examples may include safe housing in a genuine crisis, appropriate health or counseling support, help navigating a major life disruption, or access to trusted advice in a difficult season.
Opportunities
Opportunities are resources intended to help a person grow, serve, work, contribute, and pursue a meaningful calling.
AskWhat doors do we want family wealth to help open?
Examples may include education, vocational development, mission or service experiences, mentoring, financial education, philanthropy, or a carefully structured entrepreneurial opportunity.
Guardrails
Guardrails are expectations, boundaries, and preparation requirements that protect the purpose of the support.
AskHow can the family be generous without removing personal agency, responsibility, or accountability?
How to use this workbook
Please complete the following questions individually. Brief bullet-point responses are encouraged; this does not need to be polished.
The purpose is to arrive ready for an honest and thoughtful family conversation. There are no correct answers. Your perspective matters.
Please return your completed workbook at least 48 hours before the Zoom meeting.
Nothing you type is sent anywhere until you choose to send it, and nothing is stored on this device. Save progress downloads a file you can re-open with Resume. Email answers sends your responses to your advisor and copies you. Print gives you a paper or PDF copy.
Stewardship reflection.
What feelings arise when you think about the wealth and resources entrusted to this family?
Examples may include gratitude, responsibility, hope, pressure, freedom, concern, stewardship, opportunity, uncertainty, or something else.
What do you hope this family’s wealth produces over generations that money alone cannot produce?
Complete this sentence in your own words.
“Our family’s resources should be used to…”
What should family members always have?
Consider difficult but realistic life circumstances: illness, disability, job loss, addiction, marital disruption, financial loss, caregiving responsibilities, grief, or a season of vocational uncertainty.
Regardless of life circumstances, what should every family member always have access to?
Which three items above are the most important core commitments?
What forms of assistance reflect love and dignity but could become unhealthy if they continued indefinitely or lacked clear boundaries?
What support should never be used as a mechanism of control, approval, or punishment within the family?
Bring this to the meeting
You do not need to resolve questions 6 and 7 on your own. Name the tension honestly here, and the family will work it through together on the call.
What opportunities should wealth make possible?
Consider opportunities that develop faith, capability, calling, work ethic, wisdom, generosity, and service.
What experiences or opportunities should family wealth help make possible for current and future generations?
Which three opportunities would best help future family members become faithful, capable, productive, and generous adults?
Which opportunities should require individual preparation, initiative, outside counsel, co-investment, or demonstrated responsibility?
What would be a meaningful way for future generations to participate in kingdom, charitable, or community impact?
Think about participation rather than donation. What would a grandchild actually do: decide, serve, give, or lead?
Generosity with wisdom.
Consider this statement.
“Generosity should strengthen a person’s dignity, calling, responsibility, and capacity to contribute.”
What does this mean to you in the context of your family?
Identify one potential tension or concern you want the family to discuss openly.
Examples may include fairness among siblings, expectations around work, lifestyle differences, business or investment opportunities, unequal needs, family communication, or creating dependence.
Complete this sentence.
“A healthy guardrail for our family would be…”
Your priorities for the conversation.
If the meeting only reached three of each, these are the ones you would want on the table.
My top three guarantees.
My top three opportunities.
What is one question you most hope the family addresses during this meeting?
Before we meet
Preparing for the conversation.
Please come ready to listen with curiosity and to speak honestly. The purpose of this process is not to achieve immediate agreement on every issue. It is to begin identifying the shared direction that can guide future decisions.
We will return often to three questions
- 01What should our wealth protect?
- 02What should our wealth make possible?
- 03How can we be generous in ways that strengthen people and preserve family unity?
The goal is not a final policy manual. It is a clear, shared legacy framework that can guide later discussions about mission, inheritance, gifts, the family’s commercial properties, philanthropy, and future generations.