It was a dark and stormy night…
No, actually it was a gorgeous sunny, hot July day and my
children were on deck for their next swim heat at the weekly meet when my phone
rang, buzzed, and bleated that I had calls, texts, and emails coming in.
“It’s your Uncle John.
He thinks he’s having a heart attack and the EMTs have been
called.” The next deluge of calls was to
say he had passed away and my grandfather was being transported to a hospital
for evaluation. We left the swim meet
early.
Uncle John had been my grandparent’s caretaker for a few years;
he lived with them and made it possible for them to stay in their home rather
than an assisted living facility as they aged into their 90’s. For most families the passing of an uncle or
aunt would be a fairly straight forward loss.
But that was not what happened with the passing of Uncle John.
A few years ago, 1995 to be exact, my grandparents called in
their children for The Talk. They sat
down and my grandparents mapped out what they had put in place for their
estate, they let everyone know they had a will and had established a family
trust for their house. They were on top
of things in 1995.
Now in 2015 as the family traded phone calls and tried to
sort out a plan after the loss of Uncle John things about the will and the
intentions of my grandparents became murky.
When my grandmother passed away in 2014 everyone agreed that we would
wait for my grandfather to also pass away before anything was done about the
estate. This sounds fancy but it was
only their home and personal belongings. Then Uncle John died before his father. Uncle John was the only person in the family
who knew where their will was kept, who had banking information, who knew
anything about all of the bits and pieces that would need to be taken care of
once both my grandmother and grandfather were gone. As
the surviving family we were all at a loss about how to best handle the next
steps.
In the interceding months our family has found many needed
documents. Yes the will was discovered,
it had not been updated since 1995 and many items listed had been sold off over
the two decades since it was drafted, additionally items had not been added to
the lists such as vehicles. We managed
to sort out how to disperse their estate as closely to their wishes as we
could, except for grandma’s china which we are still debating how to share
between the grandchildren.
My husband and I realized as we sifted through my
grandparent’s home that we had not really organized things in a way that anyone
could use if we were to die. The list
includes but is not limited to a contact list, life insurance policy
information, guardianship details for our children, advanced directives for
medical care, property information such as mortgage company contracts, deeds,
titles, car loans, banking info including credit card contact information.
How can your family avoid this? First, find all your important documents and
file them together. (Amazon has a huge selection of filing systems for this https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=death+organizer&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Adeath+organizer
)
The American Bar Association has put together an article at
this URL that contains links to forms they have created to help anyone in
planning for the inevitable.
If you look at the ABA link and it seems over whelming http://www.naepc.org lists local legal
professionals who are certified in estate planning.
LegalZoom.com also has, for a small fee, estate planning
kits
It is difficult to think about death of a loved one,
especially your death. It is more
difficult to be the spouse, children and possibly parents left wondering why
you did not make the effort to plan ahead.
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