Take My Liberty BUSI 354 Class

Liberty's catalog describes BUSI 354 as a course on the efficient conservation and transfer of wealth consistent with a financial planner's clients' goals, studying the legal, tax, financial and non-financial sides of the process, including trusts, wills, probate, advance directives, charitable giving, wealth transfers and related taxes.

Dalton and Langdon's early chapters introduce the estate planning process and the documents every plan needs, from wills and powers of attorney to health care directives. The next chapters cover how property ownership and titling decide what passes through probate, and the probate process itself.

The middle of the course turns to trusts and lifetime gifting, the gift tax and the estate tax, with a reading from the chapter on valuation and the marital deduction beside them. The later chapters cover the generation-skipping tax, charitable planning and planning for business owners and special situations.

Forums worth 50 points fall in weeks one, two, three, four, six and seven.

The Client Interview, worth 200, falls in week five, and the Estate Plan Memo, worth 200, and Estate Plan Exam, worth 90, fall in week eight.

A 30-point quiz closes each of the first seven weeks.

Forums carry 300 points, the interview and memo 400, quizzes 210 and the exam 90.

BUSI 354 is taken around a client, since the interview in week five and the memo in week eight work best when they concern the same person or family.

Forum threads apply each week's chapters to a realistic family. A probate thread might trace which of a widow's assets pass by will, which by beneficiary designation and which by joint ownership; a gifting thread might show how annual exclusion gifts reduce a taxable estate; a trust thread might compare a revocable living trust with a will for a blended family.

Threads cite Dalton and Langdon and official sources such as the IRS, and replies follow classmates' posts where prompts require them.

For the Client Interview, a structured questionnaire is prepared for you, covering family, assets, titling, beneficiaries, goals and concerns. You conduct the interview with your client, often a willing relative or friend, and share your notes; the write-up is then drafted from them, following your section's format.

The Estate Plan Memo turns that interview into a plan: the client's situation, the issues found, recommended documents and strategies, tax considerations and next steps, written as a planner's memo.

The quizzes and the estate plan exam are yours.

Every written piece reaches you early so you can read it before submitting.

A BUSI 354 writer has worked in estate or financial planning, as a planner, a trust officer, a paralegal in an estate practice or an advisor who coordinates with attorneys, usually with a finance or legal background.

That experience gives the memo the shape of a real planning recommendation and keeps the advice within the planner's role, recommending that documents be drafted by an attorney.

Tax figures, from the annual exclusion to the estate tax exemption, are taken from current IRS sources and dated, and a second reviewer checks each one.

Nothing written is legal or tax advice for a real person; it is analysis for the course.

Your identity, and your client's, stays with the coordinator.

Ask how a bypass trust uses the exemption, or any similar question, before a quiz and a plain answer comes back.

Forum prompts on stewardship and generosity go to writers comfortable with a biblical view of wealth.

The client interview is the first hurdle. Students must find someone willing to share family and financial details, ask the right questions and turn the answers into a structured write-up worth 200 points.

The memo is the second. It asks students to spot issues, such as outdated beneficiary designations or assets that will go through probate, and recommend solutions, which requires pulling together almost every chapter.

Taxes are the third. The gift, estate and generation-skipping taxes have their own rules, exclusions and exemptions, and the numbers change each year.

Trust types blur together, from revocable and irrevocable trusts to bypass, QTIP and charitable remainder trusts.

The forum load is steady, six 50-point posts in seven weeks.

Week eight stacks the memo and the exam together.

Students uncomfortable with discussing death and money find the topic itself demanding.

Booked before the first week, the class opens with the Forum 1 thread ready and the interview questionnaire planned early.

Forum threads arrive before each forum week opens.

Your interview questions arrive in the third week, and the write-up follows soon after you send your notes.

The memo comes with most of the final week still ahead, so the exam has room.

Your quote lists six forums, the interview questionnaire and write-up, and the memo. Quizzes and the exam never appear on it.

Late starters are quoted for what remains.

Because the interview and memo are worth 400 points between them, students usually start there.