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Some times, one finds a book that tells you, better than any other, how to do a thing. For those who wish to be out-going, the standard has long been Dale Carnegie's How to Make Friends and Influence People. For those who wish to grow rich, the standards are Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, or a more recent classic, The Four-Hour Work Week, by Timothy Ferriss. For those who wish to save and invest what they have earned, the standard is The Richest Man in Babylon, by George S. Clason. And finally, for those who wish to pass their wealth on to their children or their friends without getting shaken down by the State or probate attorneys in the process, the standard used to be How to Avoid Probate.
Until now.
I think that The Art of Passing the Buck, Volume One, does the best job that I have ever seen of telling the average Joe or Joan, in simple words, how to put their property into a Trust, either a family Trust or an irrevocable Trust, and how to maintain that Trust so that it can pass that property on to those whom they want it to go. I say this as one who has a degree in law (Juris Doctor), and one who has been working with attorneys and on my own for the last twenty years to probate estates and to prepare family trusts for lay men and women.
Volume One of The Art of Passing the Buck tells the reader why it is important to set up a trust, and why the very rich have been using this method to preserve their property to and for their children for at least the last thousand years or so. I wish that this book had been written, and that I had known about it, when I was helping people to set up trusts and pour-over wills for them. If I had, I would have told them to buy this book before going any further. Volume One has indispensable knowledge, in laymen's terms, of telling what a trust is, and how it works.
Some may think that the price tag on this book is just a tad high. So far, though, I have only been able to find four ways to get the knowledge that is found in this book:
- You can go to law school, and pay particular attention to the courses on Wills and Trusts. I am told that this is both rather expensive and labor-intensive these days;
- You can become a paralegal or a lay Trustee, and go into apprenticeship for four or five years at a law firm or office specializing in Trusts or Estate Management. This seems also to be a bit labor-intensive;
- You can teach yourself how to read the law, and read through Bogert's Trusts and Trustees, all twenty-two volumes of it; or
- You can buy, read, and use The Art of Passing the Buck.
I must also say that while I have done numbers 1 and 2 above, and am in the process of doing number 3, I have learned more from The Art of Passing the Buck than I have from the other three ways combined. The Art of Passing the Buck may thus be a bit cheaper.
I would recommend The Art of Passing the Buck to any intelligent layman or woman (or even a lawyer) who wished to learn how to protect his or her property, or the property of others, and to pass it on to those that they most cared about, instead of leaving it to probate attorneys or the state.
I have one warning, though. The writer of this book is very contrarian. That is, he has some things to say which are a bit outside the box. Any one willing to spend more than ten minutes of thought on what he says will find some truth there. Those who can't or won't think should not read this book.
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