{"id":137932,"date":"2012-06-26T13:00:05","date_gmt":"2012-06-26T20:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/blog\/?p=137932"},"modified":"2018-11-21T08:22:51","modified_gmt":"2018-11-21T16:22:51","slug":"estate-settlement-reading-the-will-is-not-what-you-expect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/estate-settlement-reading-the-will-is-not-what-you-expect\/","title":{"rendered":"Estate Settlement: Reading the Will Is Not What You Expect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Big life experiences: If you haven&#8217;t been through them, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wills-trusts-and-drama-what-to-expect-when-settling-an-estate\/\">I wrote earlier<\/a>, then images from movies and TV will shape your expectations and may leave you confused. No, you (or your partner) won&#8217;t give birth on an elevator or in the backseat of Brooklyn taxi accompanied by a witty but kindhearted cabbie.<\/p>\n<p>And, chances are, in estate settlement, you won&#8217;t experience scenes like the two pop-culture references that came to my mind in younger years:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li>Jane Eyre (or anyone in pretty much any novel or movie ever) surprised by a long-lost relative leaving her a fortune.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Christina Crawford in the camp classic &#8220;Mommie Dearest,&#8221; shock frozen on her face as she learns, from mother Joan&#8217;s will, that she&#8217;s been completely disinherited.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Yes, I&#8217;m female. Still, no matter your gender, chances are you can picture your own television or movie scenes, grieving family crowded into a wood-paneled office, either satisfied or shocked by what they&#8217;re hearing. (In a soap opera, this is usually where the never-acknowledged son or daughter comes out of the woodwork.)<\/p>\n<p><i><b>Last message from Dad<\/b><\/i><br \/>\nAs I described earlier, the first communication I received from the attorneys representing the trust was a legal document I was expected to sign &#8212; but didn&#8217;t. After my siblings and I returned the forms, we received an email from the firm&#8217;s representative, introducing himself and expressing sympathy for our loss.<\/p>\n<p>A few weeks later, I got a large envelope in the mail with a copy of the will. (For those who commented on this after the previous piece: No, it didn&#8217;t arrive immediately, and we had to pointedly ask for it to find out when to expect it.) I took one look at the envelope, set it carefully on the table and made dinner for my little boy. After he was in bed, I poured a glass of wine, gritted my teeth and finally started reading at the dining table.<\/p>\n<p>No wood-paneled office, no gasps of surprise \u2026 but still one of the weirder experiences of my life. It felt like hearing my dad&#8217;s voice, but filtered through a cold interpreter who only has an outdated grasp of English &#8212; a more severe Shakespeare.<\/p>\n<p><i><b>Everyone has a &#8220;crumpled second page&#8221;<\/b><\/i><br \/>\nSetting aside movie comparisons, one of the issues most families will struggle with is secrecy &#8212; for many reasons, children don&#8217;t want to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/ask-the-readers-how-can-i-talk-to-my-parents-about-money\/\">talk to parents about money<\/a>. I discovered in the early weeks of this process that my siblings and I had different levels of understanding about Dad&#8217;s plans, and that my older siblings, who knew more, were still hamstrung by out-of-date information &#8212; plans Dad made that later changed or just vague descriptions of assets that are now proving difficult to track down.<\/p>\n<p>One conversation with the attorneys turned up a &#8220;crumpled second page&#8221; of a life insurance policy, creating a need for legal detective work. (If you looked in your filing cabinet now, do you think you&#8217;d have something equivalent to a crumpled second page of something? I know I would. Dave Ramsey writes about organizing documents for your loved ones in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.daveramsey.com\/blog\/legacy-drawer-keep-your-family-prepared\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Legacy Drawer<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p><i><b>Plan A: &#8220;Don&#8217;t die&#8221;<\/b><\/i><br \/>\nI can understand why the secrecy &#8212; or at least reluctance to have the conversation &#8212; happens. I <a href=\"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/creating-a-will-its-not-as-scary-as-you-might-think\/\">created a will<\/a> after my son was born, making the big choice, among others, about who would get custody of my son in the event of my passing. These are choices I don&#8217;t necessarily want to have to explain or defend to anyone not named in my plans.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m also hoping it&#8217;s all moot and we never have to implement &#8220;Plan B.&#8221; (As I always say, &#8220;Plan A is &#8216;Don&#8217;t die.'&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>We also, of course, don&#8217;t want to think about dying (see &#8220;Plan A&#8221;), and we certainly don&#8217;t want to suggest to our older relatives that we think about their ends. It&#8217;s an awkward conversation to have. I will join the chorus of voices advising you to have the conversation about estate planning, no matter how awkward.<\/p>\n<p><i><b>The big reveal<\/b><\/i><br \/>\nYou can understand why I won&#8217;t go into details about what my dad had or what he left; I know J.D. has worked through his own issues about what to share and not share publicly, and I have my own privacy as well as my family&#8217;s to consider and respect.<\/p>\n<p>I ended up reading through the multiple estate documents once that night &#8212; and again the next day. Just like with Shakespeare, eventually I got it. And what the paperwork left me with was a sense that Dad had done a Herculean job of being equitable &#8212; to his wife (our stepmother), my three siblings and me. He was pretty smart with his money throughout his adult life, and he was smart with it at his passing.<\/p>\n<p>It was also, strangely, sweet. While some assets exist in the trust, certain items are to be disbursed through the will &#8212; special coins he purchased (one for each child, of course), a car, a boat \u2026 and two electric bicycles. I remember hearing about the coins from my stepmother, and the bicycles, which he was quite proud of, from my dad.<\/p>\n<p>The will, though, only answered a few questions, and three months later, we&#8217;re still looking for all the answers.<\/p>\n<p><i>&#8230;to be concluded&#8230;<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Big life experiences: If you haven&#8217;t been through them, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wills-trusts-and-drama-what-to-expect-when-settling-an-estate\/\">I wrote earlier<\/a>, then images from movies and TV will shape your expectations and may leave you confused. No, you (or your partner) won&#8217;t give birth on an elevator or in the backseat of Brooklyn taxi accompanied by a witty but kindhearted cabbie.<\/p>\n<p>And, chances are, in estate settlement, you won&#8217;t experience scenes like the two pop-culture references that came to my mind in younger years:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li>Jane Eyre (or anyone in pretty much any novel or movie ever) surprised by a long-lost relative leaving her a fortune.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[496],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137932"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}