Endowment fund handbook makes money management easier

The fourth edition of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund's "Handbook for Attorneys, Accountants, and Financial Advisors" still remains a valuable resource, financial experts say.

The latest edition of the guide was published last September. It has been written and revised over the past 15 years by a dedicated cadre of volunteer lawyers, financial planners, accountants and tax professors.

"One of my clients, a couple, during our annual review told me they were interested in a charitable trust," said Joyce Franklin, a CPA and financial planner with her own firm, JLFranklin Wealth Planning in Larkspur. "They have excess wealth. They can't spend it all in their lifetimes. They were thinking about doing something good and giving back."

Franklin's first line of advice for them was to pull out the handbook and cite the appropriate information from the section on gifts of remainder trusts.

"Part of the challenge," said Franklin, in business for 12 years, "is getting clients to read the handbook. Rather than give them a chapter, I might photocopy just the relevant pages."

Franklin said the handbook is highly useful because even though she considers herself an expert in the areas of financial planning, taxes and investments, "when issues come up that are out of my scope," she said, the handbook is a wellspring of concise information.

Not only is the handbook's information concise, but also it's written in a style that's easy to understand, said Robert Caplan of Foster City, a CPA since 1979. "The handbook is written on a client level," and is very accessible. It "has nice summaries of key points. And it's very good to double check on issues such as estates and trusts.

Like Franklin, Caplan often takes sections of the handbook and copies them for clients. After a recent query about probate fees, all he had to do was photocopy the section for his client.

Richard Seiler — who works for UBS Financial Services in its Menlo Park office — is prohibited from photocopying any part of the handbook with UBS' clients. But he uses the handbook when clients are sitting in his office.

"The handbook is a valuable resource in terms of when I talk to my clients, to have the understanding of estate trust issues," Seiler said.

Seiler often asks his clients if they are charitably oriented. "I try to do larger scope financial advising and what people should think about when they make their overall plan. The book helps explain what can happen if you don't plan properly. There's a whole chapter on charitable giving."

Jeff Bernstein, a San Francisco-based attorney with 30 years of experience who co-wrote the handbook's insurance chapter, said the book serves as a good overview of the fundamentals of law, probate and estate planning. "I use it here and there as a reference," said Bernstein, senior tax partner at Coblentz, Patch, Duffy and Bass LLP. "It's not intended to be an in-depth analysis, but it has good summaries and thumbnail sketches and also has a great bibliography and it's got all the Web sites listed for anyone who practices in the field. It's been well received which is one reason why we have to keep updating it."

Julius Aires, a CPA with Blank, Aires, and O' Sullivan in Millbrae, says the handbook is also extremely useful to him. "Sometimes I'll just pull it out to figure out what someone's estate tax exemption is. If you need a basic number or percent, it's all in there."




To find out more about the Jewish Community Endowment Fund handbook, call (415) 777-0411.