It’s that time of year. I enjoy seeing the combines sweep across the fields, the grain carts in hot pursuit, and the loaded trucks rolling toward the bins or the elevator. Most clients are reporting good to excellent yields, which are especially necessary right now with the depressed prices.

When I was growing up and our city friends envied the independence we had on the farm, my father would point out all the ways that farmers are dependent: Buyers dictate the wholesale prices for our products, giant companies set the retail prices for our inputs, government makes the rules, and God controls the weather. Dad always concluded that of those, God was the most trustworthy.

One of the miracles we experience on the farm is that tiny factory called a seed. You place it in the ground, and with at least reasonably good conditions, it somehow collects nutrients and moisture and absorbs the warmth from the sun to construct a relatively monstrous green super factory, which in turn, manufactures a hundred new factories like the original.

The new seeds are always in the image of the original. The kernel of corn never reproduces soybeans, oats or wheat. Always more corn. What you want in the fall determines what you do in the spring, because you reap what you sow.

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It’s no special insight by me that we reap what we sow. It applies in many areas of life, including my area: estate planning.

Reaping their fair share

What do you want your loved ones to reap? From hundreds of farm families, I’ve learned a bit. You probably want your farm to be protected for your heirs. If you have a farming heir, you want him or her to receive the opportunity to continue the farming tradition. For heirs who aren’t farmers, you want them to reap a fair share. You hope your children will have mutually respectful family reunions. You might want the intangible values that are learned on the farm such as hard work, independence, love, community, thrift and faith to be carried forward, even for descendants who are off the farm.

If this represents the kind of estate planning harvest your family is to reap, you have to sow the right seeds.

Some of these goals can be reached only by the intentional, active relationships you cultivate now. Are you intentionally nurturing those intangible values and, by your example, making them look attractive? No one can control their adult children, of course, but your spirit carries a lot of influence.

Most of the goals require careful legal planning, too. Start with easy ones, like planting corn or beans. To make your estate do as much good as it can, you will want to assure maximum efficiency upon your death, minimizing legal fees and estate taxes. Choose revocable living trusts, as they are more efficient to administer than are wills. Tax planning provisions in your living trusts also serve to reduce estate taxes for a married couple.

Next, get the seeds in the ground. Your assets of all kinds must be titled so they will follow the living trust. Make sure deeds, bank accounts, beneficiary designations, limited liability company or corporate shares, machinery, etc., are all titled so they will be controlled by the living trust.

Getting specific

But what the living trust says happens at death is where the hybrid selection and precision planting come into play. If you want your heirs’ inheritance to be protected from catastrophes that may happen to them — lawsuits, divorces, health crises, even estate taxes when they die — your living trust will say that each one receives their inheritance in a subtrust on your death.

To give opportunity to the successor-farmer, the living trust might give equipment primarily to him or her, could give them specific rights to lease farmland from the others, and might limit the ability of heirs to sell land away from the family.

Maybe you just can’t commit yourself to specifics. You think you should postpone any “final plans” until you have lived longer and see how the family roles develop.

Don’t wait! Take your best shot, because sometimes people die unexpectedly, and you need your best ideas in the legal plan now. But your best shot becomes the initial draft, sort of a starting point. Commit to frequently updating the plan, and work with an attorney who will make those updates efficiently. Yes, cultivate the plan as it matures toward harvest.

With careful planning and ongoing nurturing, your estate plan can produce a bountiful harvest.