By Mary Quilici Aumack,
My “story” started before I was born. The writing began long before my parents. It includes my sisters and my brothers, my neighborhood, Saint Justin Parish/School, Notre Dame High School, Gonzaga University, my husband Doug and daughter Kacey, and the community of Saint Mary Los Gatos. It is the story of a life blessed with faith, love, adventure, opportunity, and ineffably valuable and supportive community. All of this contributes to my thoughts and plans around legacy.
There are many aspects to legacy, only a small part of which is financial. Our legacy is manifest in our children, and the long-term effects of our actions, advocacy and prayer.
A financial legacy is quite simply a continuation of our story. Through thoughtful planning, we are able to “continue” our financial support, our values, the institutions and ministries that we cherish. We choose for our support to continue, perhaps through endowing an annual gift, supporting a scholarship, ensuring the existence of a ballet troupe.
For Doug and me, our planning and our “continuance,” will be centered on our faith.
Ours will be a family endowment, supporting five different local Catholic organizations. Here’s how it works:
We execute an endowment agreement with The Catholic Community Foundation.
We designate either specific assets or a percentage of our estate to fund the endowment.
Every year, FOREVER, the Foundation will make distributions to our named beneficiaries.
This approach with our legacy plan has many advantages:
It is one simple agreement, supported by bequests in our estate plan.
It allows for the support of several different organizations, without burdening any of them with the administration, investment and oversight of a specific endowment.
It supports the work of the Foundation.
Our family endowment will be one way that we continue our story. If you’d like our assistance in your legacy planning, please give us a call 408-995-5219.
…to be continued
Mary Quilici Aumack is the Executive Director of The Catholic Community Foundation of Santa Clara County.