The “stuff” of an estate – Part 1
- Sharing a reader’s question about how to handle the musical intruments and items of valuable art if there’s an existing will that makes no specific mention of it
- Recommending identifying and allocating items of sentimental value while you’re alive
- “Stay tuned” for an actual question to the reader’s question
Wills say how the “residue of the estate” will be divided between beneficiaries. I only rarely see mention of items of significant sentimental or financial value.
A reader recently posed this question: “I have a will that leaves 1/3 of my estate to each of my three children. I’m wondering about the piano, many valuable watercolour paintings of my mother, two guitars and the antique dining room suite that my husband and I had painstakingly refinished. Are these items to be designated to my children and should that be in a codicil?”
If you do nothing, those items will be included in the “residue” of your estate. Your executor (likely one of your children) will have the task of including them in the overall distribution when equally dividing your estate.
They will need to decide who gets each of these items and give them a value.
The value of a used guitar might be very low in dollars and cents. But have very high sentimental value.
Equalizing the dollars and cents distribution will feel unfair to those who don’t get the items of high sentimental value. It’s easy to anticipate that decisions made by your executor could cause hard feelings among your children.
You can help avoid, or at least minimize, those feelings by dealing with items of high sentimental value before you die.
The best way to avoid conflict is to achieve consensus among your children.
Consider raising the issue when family comes together over Easter dinner.
“I’m going to die sometime. I want our family treasures to continue being treasured and not become points of conflict.”
Step one is identifying the treasures.
Items precious to you, like your mother’s china you’ve kept protected on display in a cabinet, might feel meaningless to your children.
And your guitar that you had picked up used at a garage sale 40 years ago, that you’ve been meaning to replace with a new one, might be a treasure because of their fond memories of you singing around a campfire with it.
Put your children to work. Give one of them a pen and paper and have them go around your home identifying the stuff they care about.
Not the stuff they might want because of financial value. Those items won’t cause hard feelings after you’re gone because high value items can be equalized by dollars and cents.
Now that you have a list, you can move on to the meat and potatoes of who gets what.
I’ve not done this myself. It feels like it might be a little cringy!
But maybe not.
These items have sentimental value because of how much our children love us. It’s beautiful to consider that these discussions are about how physical reminders of us will be shared among our children.
Here’s where someone with mediation expertise would be valuable. It doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game negotiation where one child getting the guitar is a direct loss to the one who didn’t.
It’s likely that each of your children feels somewhat differently about each item. One might cherish the guitar while another feels stronger feelings about the Dutch ovens you’ve used to made bread over the years.
And creative solutions can be considered. Items that all three children feel most strongly about could be shared, staying a year at a time at each child’s home.
As a last resort, there could be a random distribution, which was how my grandparents’ family photographs mounted in beautiful antique frames were distributed. I don’t recommend this “winners and losers” approach.
You will be giving your children a wonderful gift if you choose to deal with the allocation of sentimental items while you’re alive.
I’m interested in allocation solutions you might have come up with. Please e-mail me and I’ll share any helpful approaches in my next column.
Yes, there must be a next column about this subject matter because I’ve gotten to the end of this one without answering the reader’s question! Once you’ve decided how these sentimental items will be distributed after your death, do you put that into a codicil?
And what about the valuable watercolour paintings, and your mother’s china, that you treasure but your children don’t. Items that you know and appreciate the value of, but your children might unload sell at a garage sale?
Stay tuned!
