You may have read in one of our previous posts about some of the various options available for distribution of your personal property after your death.  Apparently our firm and our readers are not the only people thinking about the possibility of such a scenario.  Anne Tergesen, in her article Divvying Up the Silver, writes about a very unusual family Thanksgiving in which the parents asked their grown children to take turns choosing personal effects each would like to inherit, and marking those items “for future delivery”.

Most families are like the one described in Tergesen’s article—uncomfortable, at first, discussing the eventual passing of their parents.  They may even feel that “divvying up the silver” while their parents are still alive is greedy or insensitive, and that they will seem unloving.

But discussing the future with your children or parents is anything but unloving.  Death is a difficult subject, and one that is best broached early, preferably when there is still enough distance for everyone to have some perspective on the subject.  The last thing you want is for important decisions to be made when emotions are running high, or when your loved ones are grieving.

Let your children’s memories of your family time together be happy ones, rather than painful memories of fighting over who gets which memento.  Your estate planning attorney can even include your children in your planning sessions, if that is your preference.  Call our firm and plan today to get the hard stuff out of the way.

“Age is a high price to pay for maturity” -Tom Stoppard

Aging is not a common topic of conversation in our culture.  Our movies and television shows are very youth-focused, even our commercials tell us how to stay younger longer—with all this focus on staying young, it can be difficult to plan for getting older.  And for those particularly independent-minded people it can be especially difficult to plan for the day when you might be dependent on others.

Mutual Federal Savings Bank Vice President Dorothy Douglass learned the hard way the necessity of planning for the future.  She has written a touching article about caring for her parents as they aged, and how it has prompted her to think about her own future.

Most of us think—as Dorothy Douglass and her parents did—that there’s plenty of time to plan for our old age.  We feel young, we feel healthy, and we have years yet . . . until suddenly we don’t.  By the time we realize the need for something such as long term care insurance, or a last will and testament, or an estate plan—it’s too late.

Ms. Douglass didn’t take the advice of her well-meaning friend in time to help her parents.  Don’t make the same mistake.  You may still feel immortality stretching out before you, but take the time now to think about the future.

If you have thought about your final wishes at all, you have probably thought about who you want to be the beneficiary of your property upon your death; your spouse, your children, your grandchildren. But estate planning attorneys will ask you to think a little beyond that, to plan for what is sometimes referred to as “the natural disaster at the family picnic”.

It can be terrible to think about, but if you and your spouse and children were all to die together, who would your beneficiaries then be? These are called your remote contingent beneficiaries. If you have not specified any remote contingent beneficiaries, the state decides who your beneficiaries will be. Usually it is your heirs at law; your closest lineal ancestor(s) who can be located by the state—aunts or uncles, second cousins, etc.

However, you do not have to accept the state’s choices for your remote contingent beneficiaries. This is a situation where couples can really consider who or what their priorities are beyond their immediate family. Many people choose to list their favorite charities as their remote contingent beneficiaries. Some people list their dear friends. Others choose to use their estate to set up scholarships in their names at their alma mater.

Most people know that the “natural disaster at the family picnic” is a far-fetched situation. The chance that your estate will ever go to your remote contingent beneficiaries is, well . . . remote. But the very fact that it is so unlikely can take the pressure off, and give people the freedom to be completely candid about what kind of legacy they want to leave.

In such a situation, what will your legacy be?