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iQuestions Faculty, Ron Blue 
 
 
Question: 
 
What are the three most important questions to ask myself about 
estate planning and wealth transfer? 
 
Answer: 
 
When I’m trying to decide who’s going to get the wealth that God has 
entrusted to me through my wealth transfer plans or my estate plans, 
I’ve really got three questions I need to answer. And I have the benefit 
of having five children, all that are married, and several grand-
children, and so it took Judy and I two years to answer these three 
questions, because it’s a very complex situation.  
 
We asked the first question was, “If we transfer ‘X’ amount of dollars 
to ‘X’ child, what’s the worst thing that can happen?” Well, that differs, 
because in some cases I’ve got a teacher or a missionary-type child. 
I’ve got a single mom. I’ve got an entrepreneurial son-in-law. I’ve got 
a banker son-in-law. I’ve got differing situations. I have an attorney 
son. They all have differing economic backgrounds and needs. And all 
of them are doing okay, but we ask ourselves the question, “What’s 
the worst thing that can happen if we transfer ‘X’ amount to that 
particular child?”  
 
In one case, we have a daughter who’s married a young man who has 
an intense need to provide for his family. And if we transfer too much 
in our estate plan to that particular child, we could destroy his need to 
provide for his family. That’s a very serious thing, and that leads to 
the second question. “Well, if this is the worst things that can happen, 
how serious is it?” And in that particular case, it would be very, very 
serious to get in the way of his need to provide for his family. And so 
 
 
we have to be very careful about how much we would transfer to that 
particular child. 
 
One of our other children, we said, “Well, what’s the worst thing that 
could happen if we transferred an amount of money to him and his 
wife?” And the answer was, “Well, he’d probably just give it away.” 
Well, is that very serious? No, that’s not really serious. In the first case 
it was very serious in terms of the need to provide. In this particular 
case, it wasn’t very serious. And that’s the third question. And that is 
“What’s the probability of it happening, if, in fact, we do that?” 
 
So, the first question is: what’s the worst thing that can happen?  
 
Secondly: how serious is that? 
 
And thirdly: what’s the probability? 
 
In one particular case, it was a very serious consequence, and there 
was a very high probability, and so it drove our decisions relative to 
that family different to our single mom, our teacher son, our attorney 
son, and our other daughter and her husband.  
 
So, what’s the worst thing that can happen? How serious is it? And 
what’s the probability of it happening? What you don’t want to do in 
making these decisions is to destroy what God has intended for your 
heirs.   
 
 
 
Blue -2- 
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