February 25: Creating An Overview of Your Estate

Our first Your Legacy, Your Land webinar was held on February 25, 2016.  Couldn't make the first one?  Or want to watch it again?  We have everything you need!

This webinar covered many questions that landowners have when trying to understand the value of their estate.  Why is it important to understand the value of your estate, beyond just for estate planning, it can also be important for income tax, casualty and potential sales. 

The assignment for this webinar was to start developing an overview of your estate.  We provided a worksheet to assist you in this assignment: The Forest Property and Estate Overview Worksheet.  Please note this assignment is strictly for your use, to help you through the process of planning for your legacy.  We will not be collecting any of this personal information.  During the webinar, we addressed questions from our participants around understanding and developing an overview of your estate. 

Also available are the slides from the presentation (see below). Here are the resources that were mentioned during the presentation:

• Understanding Basis for Timber and Forest Land with Dr Tamara Cushing
• Working with an Appraiser
• Finding a Forester

And other helpful resources

• Taxation of Forestry Income with Dr. Tamara Cushing
• Forestry Tax Incentives Video with Dr.Tamara Cushing
• Estate Planning for Forest Landowners: What Will Become of Your Timberland? from the US Forest Service

Next Month's Assignment

We also talked about the assignments for next month's webinar which are all around helping you think about the long-term goals you have for your land.  So take a few minutes to complete:

• Values and Goals
• Heirloom Scale

Your responses will be emailed to you, so you can save them and share them with others. 

Ask your spouse or co-owners to take some time to complete these two worksheets as well.  Then compare your responses.  It can be very illuminating to see how everyone's values and goals overlap or vary.  Then work together to developed your shared goals for the future of your land.

• Shared Long-Range Goals

All of these assignments have been adapted from the Oregon State University's Ties to the Land program and are also available to download at the bottom of this page. 

And if you haven't done so, remember to take the Legacy Pledge and make a commitment for the future of your land.  We'll keep you informed with monthly emails sharing upcoming expert webinars, worksheets and tools and new resources to help you protect the future of your land. 

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