Estate Planning: Beneficiaries and Benefits

Tom McKinney '76, retired pediatrician and Illinois Wesleyan University Board of Trustees member, has been a Heritage Fellow for 31 years after including IWU as a beneficiary in his estate plans. This decision for Tom was two-fold: "I loved my experience at Wesleyan and I felt as though it prepared me not just academically, but also it was a place that provided personal growth for me. . . I remained connected as a young alumnus and on one of my trips back to visit, I had a chance to hear Minor Myers speak." With Tom's gratefulness for his IWU experience and the influence of Minor's inspirational leadership, Tom "was in the mindset of wanting to give back in some way."

There are a variety of ways to include IWU in your estate plans. "Including Wesleyan in my estate planning in the form of a life insurance policy was a way that I could provide a significant gift long-term without needing to put out a large financial expenditure upfront. [This] was attractive to me as a younger alum while still having young kids and still relatively early in my career." Including IWU as a beneficiary in an estate plan can cost nothing during your lifetime and allow you to create a legacy at IWU with a simple beneficiary form (no attorney required.) Other options for including IWU as a beneficiary include Various Retirement Plans, IRAs, Brokerage Accounts, Donor Advised Funds, and more. As Tom points out, "these things that are relatively straightforward to do allow you to do good in a way that also helps protect your remaining assets for yourself and your family moving forward."

Including IWU in his estate plans was important to Tom for a few reasons: "One, it's a 'thank you' for my experience there. It's also that I'm committed to the long-term success of the school and I'm a big believer in the value of a small liberal arts school model and want the school to be successful in the future. And I also think that all of us who include Wesleyan in our estate planning can be examples to future students and alumni, examples of people who care deeply about the mission of the University . . . My hope would be that in some small ways it encourages others to include Wesleyan in their philanthropic plans including estate planning."