Preserving the Family Woods: tools to help guide transfer to the next generation of landowners
Abstract
Hello, Woodland Owner! Looking forward to a nice conversation with your family about estate planning? If so, you're one of a fairly small number. Estate planning may not be a fun or easy topic, but this is an area where failing to plan can mean planning to fail. This guide is designed to help make the process a little easier. If it helps to know, you're not alone. More family woodlands will change hands and be subdivided in the next 10 years than at any other point in America's history. With conservation of family woods as the goal, we're providing this booklet to help you begin to understand the many empowering tools you can pick from to get what you want for your heirs and yourself. Keeping your property intact and managing it for the many environmental, social, and economic benefits that private lands provide the public are worthy stewardship goals. Ultimately, decisions about the future of your woods are up to you. Knowing that you care about your legacy of stewardship and ensuring that it continues. There are only four rules to follow from here: You have to think. You have to talk. You have to decide. You have to document.