What Gives for 2025?

A quick update on the year ahead

Dear all:

There are close to 3,000 subscribers to this newsletter, which I find astonishing. At the same time, I’m keenly aware that many of you joined this list when I published my monthly estate planning newsletter or while I published Life/Death/Law, my podcast about end of life planning. What Gives? is different, but to my mind it is the logical next step.

Over the last 20+ years, my interests and my writing have continued to evolve: from the nuts and bolts of estate planning law to the immensity of planning for the end of life. Unwrapping the law of property transfer and demystifying end of life takes you right to the realization that nothing we have stays ours for long.

To my mind, generosity is at the absolute core of all of the work that I’ve done so far and of the work that I plan to do now.

I’ve worked with thousands of people over the years, and the subjectivity of wealth was the most surprising thing that I witnessed. Some of my clients had very little and felt wealthy; others had millions of dollars and felt strapped. Everyone that I worked with was objectively rich — they were the ones with the means and the wherewithal to hire an attorney to write their estate plans. No one in my office was struggling with the necessity of getting enough food, water or shelter as so many do. And yet we spent very little time enjoying our mutual good fortune.

And so, as we move into this new year, my goal is to write about the people who are being generous now, or who have made generous legacies for us to enjoy, to talk to the scholars that study generosity in order to better understand what it is and how to foster it, and to find the books that inspire and illustrate the power that generosity holds for ourselves and our communities.

If my new focus doesn’t match yours, I understand. Unsubcribing is easy. But if you are at all interested in the imaginative possiblities of legacy building, I hope you’ll stay and join me in this exploration.

Wishing you all a happy new year.

Liza