My ethical will was supposed to be a simple insurance policy — then we lost our daughter

Eric Becker is the Founder and Co-Chairman of Cresset, a multi-family office with over $260B assets under management and advisement. He shares his extensive experience to advise founders, entrepreneurs, private equity partners, and ultra-high net worth families in addition to serving on the firm’s leadership team.

Cara brought so much joy, love, and perspective to our family, and her life continues to shape the way I think about what matters most. She remains at the heart of our family story — not defined by losing her, but by everything she taught us and what we learned through the experience. Rewriting my ethical will after Cara’s death is when I understood what the document was actually for. It wasn’t a backup plan. It was the only place resilience, gratitude, and presence could be passed down in my own words — instead of secondhand, through someone else’s account of who I was or from someone’s fading memories.

Families spend years planning how wealth will pass from one generation to the next. We work with attorneys, advisors, and tax professionals to think carefully about what we will leave to our loved ones. We invest enormous resources in transferring financial assets — and almost nothing in transferring the values and experiences that gave that wealth its purpose.

That imbalance takes on greater significance when you consider the scale of what will pass from one generation to the next. An estimated $84 trillion is expected to change hands in the U.S. by 2045 as older generations pass wealth to their heirs, the largest generational wealth transfer in history. We are spending........

© Fortune