In a time of book bans, budget cuts, and blurred truths, what knowledge will your children inherit because of you?

Estate planning isn’t just about property. It’s about the values, knowledge, and tools you leave behind. It’s about your intellectual legacy—what your loved ones will be equipped to know, question, and build upon after you’re gone.

There was a time, not long ago, when education was fought for with grit and sacrifice—when some Americans fought to teach one another to read in secret, when power denied access to knowledge. And still, people persisted and sought. Education wasn’t just about personal achievement—it was about collective elevation. It was about our parents and grandparents forging paths for us, ensuring we had the tools and the opportunity to move forward. Through struggles, they made sure we could walk a road that was at least paved in part by their sweat and sacrifice. It’s what allowed us to stand on their shoulders and continue moving forward.

If power denies knowledge, what will you do? Persist—or lay down? What will your children inherit: silence or strength? What are you doing with what you know and believe? 

Think back to the moments you’ve had with your family or along your own individual journey. When you dug a little deeper into that book, raised your hand in the classroom to just “get into it”, even if it felt uncomfortable. When you didn’t give up after being derailed from the typical path to a career, but instead dug in and learned the skills that picked you, when you wondered about who you are -and about others. These are the moments that shaped us—and just like those pivotal moments in your life, they’ll shape your children’s journey too.

Today, we find ourselves in a particular kind of battle. Books are being banned. Libraries and historical preservation efforts are under attack. Critical thinking is being framed as rebellion. Entire generations are being nudged toward obedience, not understanding. Apathy is an enabler of what we would question in school years: “how could they let that happen”.

The antidote may very well be what we call intellectual curiosity. The path we find after this curiosity, must be filled with intellectual honesty, and the destination? Your Intellectual Legacy.

So let’s ask: what will my heirs inherit, not in dollars, but in discernment?

When you sit down to make an estate plan, don’t stop at the financial. Think about the intellectual. Will they know where you stood? What ideas you lived by? What questions you hoped they’d keep asking? What paths will you forge for them?

This is about more than funding education for your children—it’s about preserving the conditions for learning. Maybe that means setting up an educational trust or investing in a college savings plan. Maybe it means writing a letter to accompany your will, full of the books, articles, or experiences that shaped your view of the world. Maybe it must mean getting involved in politics by finding out where your representatives actually stand and how they vote on issues. Maybe it’s recording your story in your own voice, to be passed down as history—your history.

Planning isn’t just documents, it’s the steps you take, and take now, it’s the fruits of your actions, however big or small, it’s the quiet moments, the values shared during those daily exchanges with your loved ones, the wisdom passed along in every phone call and conversation at the dinner table.

Because if we don’t intentionally pass down the pursuit of knowledge, the world will fill in the gaps for us. And my bet is, it won’t be what we hoped.

You don’t need to be a professor to leave an intellectual legacy. You just need to care about what your children and grandchildren are allowed—and inspired—to think. Ensure that your values are passed down in a way that equips them to think critically, to navigate the world with confidence, and to continue learning long after you’re gone.

And if you’re not planning for that, ask yourself: who is?

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