In Sweden, this is called “döstädning” – organizing your life before you pass away. This is more than making sure the floors and countertops are wiped down…this is about making sure the loved ones you leave behind to deal with all of your belongings don’t have a big headache, wondering what’s important to you and what wasn’t.
But let’s talk about what you can do from beyond the grave when you’re dead and they’re not. Not a damn thing. So if it’s truly important to you who gets what and what goes where, a will is a good way to state your wishes of where your life’s earnings, real estate, and personal property go and who’s tasked with making sure your actual written wishes are met (aka the executor), but sometimes that is even not enough.
Did you know after you die the ones who think they deserve more can sue the estate with their claims of entitlement? Did you know it will be the money you leave behind that will pay the attorneys to defend your written wishes, eating away to you your actual life savings? Did you know the one you chose to be in charge of your estate can be challenged against your own calcululated wishes? Did you know that at that point it will be left up to a judge, who didn’t even know you, to decide who gets what and can actually overturn what YOU carefully wrote down after you’re not here to speak for yourself?
So what do you do about it? You CAN deed over your properties to who you want to have them and get a “life estate”…meaning you live there until you die and the deal’s already done. You can put your other properties in a trust with enough support to sustain those expenses for as many years as you like. You can give your jewelry and keepsakes to the ones you want to have each piece and do that face to face. You can write checks to the charities of your choice and people of your choice. Cash out your stocks or transfer them while you’re alive and keep enough money in your bank account to live off of comfortably. THEN make one simple bank account that is split how you want it to be split. It’s normal to have a loved one on your bank accounts in case you’re too sick to pay your bills, or even healthy and not where you can pay things. Be careful who you put on that bank account, because when you die they can claim that the money they never deposited a dollar into is theirs unless you’re specific it’s not. Just be overly specific about everything to be safe.
So if your estate is complex and you have multiple heirs…you may be creating the fall of the legacy you spent your life creating if you aren’t strategic with it’s future. If that’s important to you, that your family stay a family, especially if some were reliant on you financially, you will its survival rate dramatically unless you’re specific and have these conversations with those left behind about what you want.
Heirs…if the only thing you did was BE BORN…. anything your predecessors chose to gift you is just that…..a gift. Make your own way, provide for your own life, sustain your own business, support your own kids. Your parents don’t “owe” you anything past your launch and defying them one last time is not something you want to be known for.
Deeper Than a Puddle 