Yesterday, I got a bill from the lawyer who handles my estate plan. I have been tweaking this plan from time to time and still need to confirm the most recent changes. It is a simple plan, given I don’t have a wife or kids to consider, but I seem to spend undue time agonizing about its details. It’s my fault, not the fault of my lawyer, who has earned his fee.
I have many times referred here to my tiny family structure. Basically, I have two adult nephews, my sister’s children. My nephew Kevin has two kids of his own. Suffice it to say, we’re not the closest family.
Apart from my actual relatives, Lee has two surviving nephews, Joe, and Andy, who are of similar age to mine. Each of her nephews has two kids.
As for the kids, if I had to rate them based on their likeability, Joe’s oldest daughter, Allie (Lee’s favorite!), would win in a landslide. I’d lump together Andy and Kevin’s kids. Joe has a younger child, a boy born around the time that Lee’s health went into a tailspin, whom I really don’t know at all.
Despite lumping them together, at least in terms of physical appearance, Andy’s kids are nothing like Kevin’s kids. Andy’s kids are both tall and good looking, whereas Kevin’s kids are neither tall nor particularly good looking. However, there are also commonalities. I recall Andy’s son as detached and his sister as smug and self-centered. Sometimes Kevin’s boy tries to act smug, probably the result of his superior intelligence, but I sense it’s bravado. Kevin’s daughter, who defies description, is sui generis.
You get the picture. If these four kids attended the same school, I very much doubt that they would become friends.
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The truth of the matter is, with time’s passage, I have only sporadic contact with the surviving members of Lee’s family, so it’s entirely possible that Andy’s kids have grown up to become delightful young people. I continue to hold out such hope for Kevin’s kids, too. Unquestionably, however, parents do play the major role in shaping their progeny, so I hold their children harmless.
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Despite our increasing separation, I feel obliged to name Lee’s nephews as my heirs if only to properly recognize and honor her many contributions to our partnership. Splitting up any money that I might have left to me at the end of my life is the easy part. Likewise, I am but the temporary custodian of personal items that belonged to Lee during her lifetime and rightfully should belong to her family once I am gone.
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The more difficult and daunting issue involves assigning specific items that I brought to our marriage or that we jointly acquired. These decisions demand careful thought and analysis, lest the nephews come to view the disbursement of my estate as a money grab, or worse, a burden rather than as an opportunity to gain understanding. I’d prefer being remembered than to being forgotten in short order.
Thus, I have been endeavoring to identify the nephew who would most benefit from a getting a specific gift bequest. For example, I know that Andy is an avid record collector, and I still happen to own a large collection of vinyl. Taken together and monetarily, it is a valuable collection, which includes several now-rare recordings I acquired by happenstance during my youth. However, as opposed to its mere cash value, a music lover and collector like Andy is more likely to appreciate the true value of this collection in terms of the art and cultural history it represents, than, say, my tone-deaf nephew Kevin.
Ditto for my beloved guitars (electric amps, etc.), which also would fetch a pretty penny on the open market. (For example, some years back, appraisers on Antiques Roadshow estimated the value of a Gibson acoustic guitar I got when I was twelve to be around four thousand dollars, and it’s worth considerably more now.) I lean toward leaving the guitars, etc., to Lee’s nephew Joe, a professional musician who appreciates finely made musical instruments.
My nephew Alan has an artistic bent, and enjoys painting, sculpting, and making lovely flower arrangements. Thus, I intend to make a bequest to him of several framed paintings and photographs, including a signed pencil drawing by Lee, which I only discovered after her death, sitting inside a nondescript cardboard tube down in my basement. Until then I had no clue that Lee was such a talented artist, although I do remember her saying more than once that she hoped one day to study drawing. Unfortunately, time ran out for her.
If today’s discussion strikes you as trivial or self-indulgent, so be it. However, as a single and childless man, one who is nearer the end of his life than its beginning, I am forced to take stock.
