How Regents Legacy Works
Setting up a family banking structure is one part of the job. Keeping it running, the entities, the loans, the accounting, the tax filings, the investments, and the family governance that goes along with all of it, is a different job entirely. If the goal is a legacy that can serve a family for generations, then building the structure is only the starting point. What happens after that is where most of the real work lives.
That is the problem Matthew Tullis set out to solve when he founded Regents Legacy. As he built out the Legacy Bank concept, he kept running into the same two challenges every family faced. The first was figuring out what to build for their specific situation. The second, and often the harder one, was making sure whatever they built actually kept working, year after year, generation after generation.
A legacy bank is not a single account you open and forget about. It is not an insurance policy sitting in a drawer. It is an organized family financial system involving capital, legal structures, lending, and investments, along with the record-keeping and governance needed to hold all of it together. Regents Legacy exists to help families bring those pieces together and manage them over time, not just at the start but for as long as the family wants the structure to last.
Why most families need more than a will
Most wealthy families do not have a real plan for what happens to their money once it changes hands. By the third generation, the wealth built by the first is typically gone, and roughly seven out of ten wealthy families have no actual wealth transfer plan in place, beyond whatever a will or trust says on paper. With an estimated $104 trillion expected to pass from one generation to the next by 2045, that gap matters.
A traditional estate plan distributes assets once. It is a one-time event, and the relationship with the attorney who drafted it typically ends once the documents are signed. A Legacy Bank works differently. It is designed to govern assets across generations, with built-in family education and an ongoing partnership rather than a single signing appointment. A thoughtful legacy plan is usually built to support a family for thirty years or more, which is a very different timeframe than a will that gets filed away and revisited only when something changes.
It starts with the family, not the paperwork
Before any entity gets formed or any account gets opened, Regents Legacy starts with a set of questions that have nothing to do with legal documents. What has the family already built? Who should be involved? What does the family actually want the Legacy Bank to accomplish, and who should benefit from it? What principles does the family want carried forward to the next generation and the one after that?
Those answers shape everything that follows. The family defines what the legacy is supposed to look like, and the structure gets designed to support that vision, not the other way around. From there, Regents Legacy helps develop the Legacy Bank framework: the entity and structure built around that specific family's goals and circumstances, in coordination with the legal, tax, and financial professionals needed to get it right.
Turning the idea into a working system
Once the framework is in place, the next phase is implementation. That means coordinating with the entities that were formed, opening the accounts, adding capital, and building out the lending process the family will actually use. It means putting together an investment framework, handling documentation, and establishing the governance the Legacy Bank needs to operate, both now and after the people who built it are no longer the ones running it.
This is the part where Regents Legacy differs most from simply setting up a family entity and handing over a binder full of instructions. Plenty of firms can help a family form a legal structure. Far fewer stick around to help manage what happens to that structure once it is up and running, and that ongoing management is often the difference between a Legacy Bank that works and one that quietly stops functioning within a few years.
The seven stages behind the setup
Regents Legacy calls its process the Regents Method, and it breaks down into seven stages. It begins with a conversation about the family's values and what matters most, not only financially but relationally, so the structure that gets built reflects that specific family rather than a template. From there, the family gets mapped out: roles, structure, and how ready the rising generation is to take part, along with the early groundwork on financial education.
Next comes a review of the family's existing assets, entities, and estate plan, looking for gaps and opportunities before anything new gets built. That review feeds directly into the wealth transfer strategy itself, the lending framework, the governance model, and the documentation that will move capital across generations with intention rather than by accident. From there, longer-term structures like family charters, foundations, or family councils may come into play to support unity and shared decision-making as the family grows.
The later stages shift toward people rather than paperwork: facilitating the family meetings and intergenerational conversations that build trust and alignment, and then settling into ongoing stewardship. That last stage is not a formality. It is where Regents Legacy provides continued guidance, updates, and mentorship to help a family stay aligned as years and circumstances pass.
The work that keeps a legacy bank alive
Here is where the details matter. When a Legacy Bank makes a loan to a family member, someone has to document it properly and handle the tax filings that come with it. A payment schedule needs to be set up and tracked, along with the principal and interest on that loan. Records need to be kept. Accounting and tax reporting need to happen. Investments need to be monitored and reported on. Family members need to be kept informed, and meetings need to happen so decisions get made together instead of assumed.
None of that is incidental to how a Legacy Bank functions. It is what allows the whole system to keep functioning across generations instead of stalling out after the first one. Policies also need to change as a family's circumstances change, which means the governance built around a Legacy Bank cannot be static. It has to be maintained the same way the accounts and the lending program are maintained.
This is the ongoing work Regents Legacy takes on for families: the accounting, the reporting, the tax filings, the loan administration, and the governance support that turns a good idea into a system that actually holds up over time. Depending on how involved a family wants Regents Legacy to be, that support can include annual tax filings, processing every family loan as it comes up, a dedicated Legacy Bank website, vault services for family documents and history, or ongoing tax planning aimed at reducing taxes on invested funds. There is no single right level of involvement. Families choose the amount of support that fits their situation and adjust it as that situation changes.
Building something that outlasts the people who built it
The bigger goal behind all of this is continuity. A Legacy Bank should not depend entirely on one parent or grandparent remembering the details, or on a single person being the only one who understands how the structure works. The intent is to create something closer to an institution: a family financial system that the next generation can understand, manage, and eventually lead on their own.
Building something meant to last a hundred years takes more than a good idea. It takes a system capable of continuing to run once the people who founded it are no longer around to manage it directly. That is the standard Regents Legacy works toward with every family it partners with, and it is why the relationship does not end once the entities are formed and the accounts are funded.
Behind the process
Matthew Tullis founded Regents Legacy after four decades spent advising families through wealth transfer, watching the same pattern repeat again and again: capital built by one generation, scattered by the third, not from bad intentions but from a missing system. Regents Legacy is his answer, a repeatable process backed by licensed legal and tax professionals at every stage, built to give families the kind of structure that has quietly served the wealthiest families for a long time.
Why the structure matters as much as the strategy
It would be easy to assume the hardest part of building a Legacy Bank is the initial strategy: deciding how much capital to commit, choosing the right entities, and setting the terms for family lending. That work matters, but it is rarely where things fall apart. What tends to unravel a family's plans is what happens in year eight, or year fifteen, when the person who understood the original intent is no longer available to explain it, and nobody documented the reasoning behind the decisions that were made.
That is the gap Regents Legacy is built to close. Rather than leaving a family with a structure and a set of instructions, Regents Legacy stays on as a partner: handling the books, the filings, the loan administration, and the family communication that keeps a Legacy Bank running the way it was designed to run, long after the paperwork is signed.
Ready to see what this looks like for your family
If you understand the concept of a Legacy Bank and want to see what one would actually look like for your specific situation, the next step is a conversation. Schedule a call with one of the Legacy bankers at Regents Legacy. They will take some time to learn about your family, what you have built, and what you want that wealth to accomplish for the next generation, then help you explore whether a Regents Legacy Bank makes sense for your situation.
A legacy is not something you create once and check off a list. It is something you build, manage, and eventually hand off to a generation you have prepared to carry it forward.