SF assessor to give counseling on family finances, estate planning

San Francisco City Assessor Carmen Chu. Her office will hold a forum where financial experts can give counseling on family finances and estate planning. INQUIRER/Jun Nucum

SAN FRANCISCO – The city’s Assessor–Recorder’s Office is holding its first-ever “family wealth” forum on Saturday, September 30, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the City College Campus Multi-Use Building.

The forum will offer one-on-one counseling with experts for current and prospective homeowners, their families, those seeking advice on estate planning and family finances and seniors who may have to leave properties to their loved one when their time comes.

“We are partnering with certified financial planners, with San Francisco Bar Association that would provide pro bono help with tax attorneys and state attorneys. We are also providing our own resources and our office for them to come out and speak about property taxation because that is our area of expertise as well,” Assessor Carmen Chu disclosed. “What is unique in what we will be doing is provide free one-on-one counseling so that people can talk about their specific, unique situations, on what they are going through and what kind of questions they have for their families and their lives because one’s situation is different from the others. And we want to provide the information they need depending on their situations or cases.”

One of the more compelling reason for this forum is that parents and grandparents attending community seminars ended up with more questions on what and how to leave their properties with their children as the lessons they learned on property taxes made them more open to asking questions they always had in their minds, explained Chu.

“As an assessor, I have seen these families go through these that someone passes away perhaps and left behind a property and because there was no will or some kind of trust, there is a lot of questions on who should get what, and creates a lot of discord in the family,” she reported.

“The intent in holding the family wealth forum is to have a venue where you can come to talk about planning for the future or simply talk about financial planning no matter where you are in your life, whether you are just beginning as a new family, or you are starting up and wants to know how one should be planning and managing one’s finances, how one should be paying for children’s education, saving for retirement, for buying a home, or how to the best to leave one’s property behind  to the children. All of these questions are what we wish to answer at this family wealth forum,” Chu elaborated.

Chu said that those interested are requested to register with their office, at www.sfassessor.org/familywealthforum or to call them at 415-5547434 so as not to wait in line. This would also make the one-on-one counseling effective by letting the assessor’s office know how many counselors would be needed and the languages needed for translation.

“And one thing we requested those who are working and partnering with us because they are volunteering their time for this we asked them not to solicit business. So it is really important that when someone asks a question they are not going to get a response that they would be helped more only if they are to make an appointment for them to talk to them about it later in their own offices,” Chu stressed.

”We actually want people to come prepared with questions that they might have about their situations and get the answers on the spot.”

Chu also explained her office’s efforts to provide language-accessible counseling and service.

“Among our offices’ major accomplishment include multilingual web pages, six-language translation glossary (where complicated technical terms are translated across different languages in consistently using the same and right terms for better understanding), language access policy and bilingual workshops.  We also have six certified bilingual staff that can also be reached through telephones whenever available that includes two Chinese, two Spanish, one Filipino and one Russian.”

Chu’s office has an ongoing document language translations, and over 140 documents have been ranslated to seven languages.  There are now multilingual fact sheets translated to six major languages including Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian, Spanish and Filipino.”

Chu said public officials have the responsibility to help people and to provide services and information that will make their lives easier.