Warren Buffett’s 5 estate-planning tips are just as valuable as his investing advice

If you explain, for instance, why you are giving away part of your legacy to charity, instead of leaving it to heirs, they will better understand your values. If you give more to one child than to another, telling everyone about it in advance it can prevent bad feelings. If you limit what one heir receives because of some issue, such as addiction, they’ll know their parameters — and you may be able to forestall a court challenge.

Read: Buffett partner Charlie Munger kept these rules about investing and life that you can use too

Buffett, who is the chair of Berkshire Hathaway

, encouraged people not to be afraid to explain the logic behind their decisions and not to shield their heirs from what they might inherit. He said that his own three children had challenged him over some of the decisions he made in his estate plan, and he listened to them. “There is nothing wrong with my having to defend my thoughts. My dad did the same with me,” Buffett said.

While the passage about informing heirs in advance about estate plans is called out specifically as advice, Buffett’s whole investor letter functions as estate-planning advice. Here are some of his additional lessons:

• Think about these questions before it’s too late. Buffett is 94, and he knows he needs a plan. “Father time always wins,” he wrote. “But he can be fickle — indeed unfair and even cruel — sometimes ending life at birth or soon thereafter while, at other times, waiting a century or so before paying a visit. To date, I’ve been very lucky, but, before long, he will get around to me.”
• When you are older, many of your heirs may be, too. Buffett pointed out that his three children are now 71, 69 and 66, and so he had to make a plan for another set of trustees, whom he did not name in this letter. It can be hard to think that far down the road. Buffett said he trusted his children explicitly, but that “future generations are another matter.” For many people, a professional trustee can help in this situation. A disinterested third party can administer a trust long into the future for the benefit of great-grandchildren and beyond.
• You should be wary of co-trustees, especially if you require them to come to unanimous decisions. But sometimes, it works. Buffett defended his plan to name all three of his children as equal trustees and said people challenge him about this often. “They express particular surprise at my requirement that all foundation actions will require a unanimous vote. How can this be workable?” he wrote. But in his particular case, with just three heirs and billions of dollars to dispense, a “no” answer may be better than an easy yes in many cases.
• You can change things, and you should. Buffett said he tweaks his plan every couple of years. Why? Because things change. People change. Fortunes change. Buffett said he and his late business partner, Charlie Munger, “saw many families driven apart after the posthumous dictates of the will left beneficiaries confused and sometimes angry. Jealousies, along with actual or imagined slights during childhood, became magnified, particularly when sons were favored over daughters, either in monetary ways or by positions of importance.” The key to family harmony is openness all along the way, he advised.
• Live the life you want to live, and tell your kids you’re proud of them. Buffett ended his investor letter with a love note to his kids that is really the one thing that every parent should emulate. “I have lived the way I wanted to live since my late 20s, and I have now watched my children grow into good and productive citizens,” he wrote, adding, “Their mother, from whom they learned these values, would be very proud of them. As am I.”