Women are planners. By nature they organize an event well before it takes place. My daughter-in-law spent a year planning her wedding, I always know my Christmas dinner menu by December 1st, and if my daughter has an big date on Saturday night she has her clothes laid out by Thursday. It is in our nature from childhood to be organized and prepared. So why are so many of us prone to procrastination when it comes to planning the division of our personal property when we will no longer need it?
Things can sometimes get a little crazy when you combine grief, sentiment, and property division. So how do you divide the heirlooms without dividing the heirs? A little advance planning can make all the difference and the place to start is with a household inventory sheet.
This document, which can be prepared by any professional liquidator, is simply a list of all your antiques, art, and other valuables and their current “fair market value.” The liquidator will come to your home and on a room-by-room basis compile a list of everything you would like to include.
Do not attempt to do this yourself. It can be time consuming, frustrating and is usually inaccurate. I recently overheard two women at a local antique mall discussing a set of dishes. “They look just like Mom’s so write down $900,” one of them said. When I ran into them half an hour later the comment I heard was, “look these are like Mom’s and they are $250.” I introduced myself and ask if they were in need of assistance. They explained how they were visiting local antique malls to value their mother’s things. They were totally frustrated, for after weeks of searching they had only marked three things off the list, and the list was four pages long! There was an audible sigh of relief when they realized that the job could be done for them in a matter of hours.
Once you have this list there are a variety of ways it may be used. Some people like to select specific items to be left to each person in their will. Personally I prefer to include all the family members in the decision process because it allows for sentiment.
I often suggest to my clients that they make a video as we go through the house making their inventory list. This is a great way to help future generations understand the items that have been handed down through the family. Did you know that your grandmother gave birth to all five of her children in the bed that sits in your parent’s guest room? You may have noticed the notches in the side of the old cabinet in the kitchen, but did you know they are actually a record of how many inches your father grew each year when he was a boy? And that quilt that you have always admired may seem even more special when you know that each square of fabric represents a piece of clothing that your mom wore as a little girl.
The daughter of a client I worked for in 1997 recently contacted me to ask if I remembered working with her Mom. She went on to say that her Mother had passed away in 2005 and while going through her things she had found “the video” with a note asking that, at an appropriate time, it be shared with the family.
This past May, after Mother’s Day dinner, she gathered everyone in the living room where she surprised them with a viewing of “A Day with Mom.” The viewing brought tears and laughter and much reminiscing. And as she said to me “it was like we got to be with her…… just one more time.” Until next time……….Linda