Going to take a Sentimental Journey
Remember the old song: Going to take a sentimental journey, going to set my heart at ease? Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? A sentimental journey to set one’s heart at ease. As an estate planning attorney, I fancy that part of my job is to put my clients’ minds, as well as their hearts, at ease. Many of my clients thank me for making their estate planning far easier than they ever imagined – less scary and overwhelming, too. I know – and so do they – that peace of mind is real.
Some folks envision estate planning as an enormous undertaking. And while it can be a job, it’s a job meant for a professional. As a practitioner, I carry the load, not my clients. But oftentimes, the process is a lot more straightforward than one would imagine. Suffice it to say, there are a lot of misconceptions about the estate planning process and one of them involves your stuff. In legal parlance, we call it your tangible personal property, among other things.
Would you believe that some of the most contentious instances in estate planning drama have little to do with money or big-ticket items, but rather with the more sentimental pieces of property left in an estate.
With more valuable assets one can create distributions (or the state creates them for you if you haven’t done any estate planning) so when you pass away there is a place for it to go and a plan based on how it is to be divided. But we oftentimes forget about things that have no economic value. We forget about the items that have sentimental worth. When we talk about estate planning, we’re talking about the whole of your estate.
A good estate planning attorney talks about more than the dollar value of your estate, she should also talk about the things that touch the heart – whether it’s your heart or someone else’s. Estate planning is big picture stuff. It’s a holistic approach to making order of your life and your legacy.
Often the things that touch the heart, while they have no economic value, are intrinsically valuable because they are a part of us and they are things we will leave to our loved ones to remember us by. They are also things that are typically not accounted for in an estate plan and this can lead to unintended conflicts and hurt feelings.
If you’d like to invite family and friends over, hand out post-it notes and have them put their names on items they’d like when the inevitable happens, go ahead. If you’d like to keep a running list of stuff for the family members currently on your good side, make yourself happy. You can do these sorts of things, but I would suggest making it official. Seek out an estate planning attorney to help you create a will or a trust and make sure it includes a personal property memorandum.
You can’t divide a sentimental asset up into parts, so take a moment to think about your stuff. And while you’re at it, take advantage of the season – it’s spring-cleaning time, after all. Reach out to those who might be touched by a treasured item you could leave them. Let them know what you’re thinking, have those conversations, and then consider writing down the important things. Leave them with that treasured something that will help them make a sentimental journey when thinking of you. I promise, it’ll set your heart at ease.
