Re: Will

Posted by ScottyHOMEy on October 23, 2009 at 19:12:50 from (70.105.238.87):

In Reply to: Re: Will posted by bc on October 23, 2009 at 15:49:06:

I don't blame ya for a second for holding back, bc.

I had a friend in NYC when I worked there who had his MBA, and worked in structuring corporate deals. Harvey got so sick of being cut off at the knees by the lawyers in on the deals that he went to law school and got back into the same fray and did very well.

My work had been in the area of charitable trusts and annuities in a couple of very large private research universities. Armed with the stories of my friend Harvey's experience, I never felt the need to go to law school. My approach was to be well-versed in the laws that applied to my area, but to keep a good lawyer and a sharp CPA at my side for any ideas that go outside the boilerplate. Doing my part to stay current and ethical, we worked well together as a team. Had a few good ideas of my own in ticklish cases that flew, but it didn't bother me if a brainstorm landed in the mud.

The real challenge in that business was the ethics. Nothing would aggravate me more than trying to get donors to seek their own counsel. I could explain until I was blue in the face that I will do my best to explain to them honestly how the tax and other laws worked, but that a) I was not a lawyer and b) even if I was, my job was to obtain gifts for the university, and they needed to seek their own counsel, even if only to make sure issues unknown to me were taken into consideration. They might have adored me personally, but I couldn't persuade them that they could believe me but should not rely on me for advice. Too many of them took the view that if the gift was to benefit the university, then the university should provide the lawyer to them. To get them to understand that any lawyer I pay is presumed to be working for me . . . Aaarrgggghhhhhh!

As ticklish as all that could get, I kept and still have a file of the gifts I turned down, mostly cases where the proposed gift did not make sense for the donor. A simple example was one donor's retirement fund, which consisted of an annuity purchased by his employer. He wanted to flip it into a charitable gift annuity. A little inquiry showed that he had little in the way of liquid assets, and it was an inadvisable deal from the get-go. Add to that that he had a son with special needs . . . It was a big enough proposal that I had to fly out to San Antonio to thank him for his good intentions, but to let him know that we and the students who would benefit from his generosity would be just as grateful if he were to direct his annual gifts to augment an existing scholarship directed to the same purpose as the one he proposed to ultimately endow. He seemed a little amazed that I turned down his gift annuity proposal. A couple of weeks later, my reward came when he called and then conferenced in his attorney, who thanked me for holding to honest principles.

It might not seem to some folks that there is any difference between information and advice. In your profession there is a very definite distinction, directed by a defined code of ethics. In my own world, life would be a lot easier if my colleagues would accept the challenge to hold to equally stringent standards.

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