How to Avoid Drama When Passing On Family Heirlooms
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Here's your money briefing for Wednesday, August 2nd. I'm J.R. Whelan for The Wall Street Journal. Diving up heirlooms can be an awkward and frustrating process, but having a plan can avert a lot of family drama.
Unspecific language in a will or trust can cause rifts. Also, not knowing the value of stuff. It's often parents might have things and the kids know nothing about it or couldn't care less about it, but it turns out they're these really valuable things.
We'll talk to Wall Street Journal personal finance reporter Ashleya Ebling after the break.
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When it's time to distribute family heirlooms, planning the right way can help avoid awkward and painful battles. Wall Street Journal personal finance reporter Ashleya Ebling joins me. So, Ashleya, let's start with the big picture. A lot of the divvying up of family heirlooms is determined by what's been stated in a person's will.
How can vague language in a will or trust create family drama over heirlooms?
How does someone draw up a will?
Well, typically you'll work with an estate lawyer to draw up a will and or a trust. But it's interesting, a lot of estate lawyers gloss over the stuff, the personal property is what it's called in estate tax lingo. But make sure you talk to the lawyer about your stuff, not just bank accounts and real estates, but the jewelry, your collections. that kind of thing that you want to know where it's going to go. And typically a will would say, I leave my personal property to my spouse. If no spouse survives me to my children to be divided as they agree or to be divided equally. But you can see right off with that kind of vague language, you're going to cause problems.
Yeah. When someone lists their heirlooms and who the recipients will be, is that legally binding?
If it's spelled out in the will or trust, yes, it is legally binding. And there's also this great option in many states to leave what's called a personal property memo. And on that, you literally list the things out with the item and who it's going to go to and make sure you sign and date it. If that's incorporated into your will or trust, it will be legally binding. If not, it's something the person handling your estate would take into consideration.
So what are some of the biggest mistakes that people make when they're dividing up their belongings among their heirs?
So this unspecific language in a will or trust can cause rifts. Also not knowing the value of stuff. It's often parents might have things and the kids know nothing about it or couldn't care less about it. But it turns out they're these really valuable things.
Who would determine what the value of heirlooms are?
So in that case, you'd need to call in an appraiser. And I talked to this one woman, for example, whose late 98 year old dad, he'd lived in like an assisted living apartment. And there was what she thought was a knickknack on a kitchen counter, but an appraiser came in and it turned out it was a sculpture by this Israeli Canadian artist that was appraised at more than $4,000.
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