Lessons Learned After #9

Hi everyone!

I'm currently still in Winona, MN this weekend to wrap up the funeral/memorial service/Family Estate business. The viewing is tonight, funeral tomorrow, and burial this Wednesday back on home turf.

Since this isn't my relative, but my wife's, I have been fortunate to get a sideline view about behaviors in family members towards their "inheritance" or more like "what am I going to get off this person or that person" and it has led me to a few conclusions:

1. If you are going to die you NEED to have a current will.
2. When you have your will made, choose your executor wisely!
3. Put all of your insurance paperwork, wills, legal documents, and titles to houses, cars, and boats in a secure location, but PLEASE tell some family members where that "location" is.
4. If you have no immediate family (wife, children, etc) your next of kin (brothers, sisters, or even parents) are the next of kin.
5. When money or assets are involved, it's amazing how relatives will cheapen your death by bickering over "what do I get"? Civility can go right out the window if survivors from several different branches of the family tree were raised without ethics, morals, and manners.
6. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! GET YOUR FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS IN ORDER.

A Will, as everyone knows lists all of your assets, how it's divided among survivors, and who should oversee it. I realize that a will is a living fluidic document because you can't forecast the "what-ifs". By "what-ifs" I mean, those family members you think will survive to inherit your things.

If you choose an executor, pick someone who is responsible, and who can stand above the "fray" of family in-fighting, and can objectively look at the division of assets with your wishes in mind.

Family, as I said, WILL fight over what you've left them. If they don't argue about that, they will pontificate and speculate on who else is undeserving of assets. Or, they will talk amongst themselves and say "he or she wasn't even here to help so they should get nothing" or "Well that side of the family didn't invite him or her to functions, or dinners, holidays, weddings, etc".

Perhaps your family will not behave this way. Perhaps you were brought up as an only child, and there are no relatives. Families are very dynamic, intricate, and constantly in a state of flux. However, that should not excuse you for neglecting your funeral arrangements. You need to set up and pay for a few things:

1. In the State of Minnesota, it's law that if you are buried in a casket, or cremated and put in an urn, you are to place your remains in a burial vault so as not to pollute the soil, etc. Burial vaults range in price so take that into account when you look into this.
2. If you are not being cremated, purchase your casket and find a location you wish to be buried.
3. If you are being cremated, purchase your urn.

In any case, once you have taken care of your own expenses for your funeral, make cure you keep those documents, reciepts, and other associated documents in the same place you keep your will, etc.

If you have to, make a special folder and label it as funeral arrangements, or estate planning. Anything that will let your survivors know that that folder covers all the paperwork in case you leave this earth.

Your death and passing should never be cheapened by infighting, or greed over your success. Material wealth is all that will be left and remembered if you don't take emotion, and greed out of the equation. That's a fact.

Everyone will already be upset that you are gone, some will not be. That also is a fact.

Live your life well, and try to build relationships with those you want to will your estate to.

They are the ones who will be left scouring your estate.

...I hope to be blogging more regularily after this is over with. So, please keep checking back.