For executors

8 Ways You Can Help Your Elderly Parent BEFORE Crisis

| Julie Hall

Here are 8 ways that you can be proactive and and take action now to help de-clutter your parents’ home.  Do this now for their sake, and for your own sake.  I can tell you from personal experience: you do not want to have to do this in “crisis mode.”

  1. Have the important conversations with your parents.  Approach them with love and ask them about their wishes.  Try to gain an understanding of their financial situation.  Be sure to know where all the important legal documents are kept. 
  2. Start to de-clutter your parents’ home.  Since they won’t likely appreciate this, suggest that you are helping them avoid both a fire and a tripping hazard.  Start by removing expired food, unused things, piles of newspapers, etc.
  3. Discuss and document allocation of personal property and heirlooms.  Create a wish list and ask an appraiser to assess the values.  Suggest “gifting” of special items while your parents are still alive.
  4. Every time you leave their house, take a few bags of donation items with you.  Dress the less fortunate.  Tell your parents you are helping them to “thin out” the house.
  5. If your parents have already moved out or passed away, begin the process of clearing out the house by using three piles to sort belongings: donate, sell, keep.
  6. When in doubt, always have a personal property appraiser evaluate antiques, collectibles, and anything you are not sure about.
  7. Continue to keep in touch with siblings and keep everyone on the same page.  This is the only way that whole family will maintain close and healthy relationships through this process.
  8. Always come from a place of love.  In the end, life is about MUCH more than the stuff.  It’s about the wonderful, deep, and abiding relationships within our families.

That’s my thoughts for this week.  Click on the “leave a comment” line below, and let’s discuss this together.

© 2010 Julie Hall

The Death Bed Thief

| Julie Hall

Exploitation can raise its ugly head in the midst of unsuspecting situations.  Such was the case with the Garvey family (not real name).  Mom and Dad Garvey were about the nicest people you’d ever wish to meet.  Their three adult children lived nearby; they loved to have all the grandchildren over for Sunday dinners.  All of the children were successful, and the family often took vacations together.  As Mom Garvey shared with me, she could not recall one moment of discord between her kids. 

Dad Garvey was diagnosed with cancer at age 73, and the disease progressed rapidly.  He had lived a good life, and faced his illness with grace and courage.  Even as his strength waned, he loved having his family visit.  But soon death was imminent and hospice was called in to assist him and his family.  That’s when strange things began to happen.

One of his daughters became uncharacteristically possessive.  She wanted to be at Dad’s bedside around the clock.  Normally a sweet and accomodating person, she would snap at her mother over the smallest thing.  She accused her siblings of not caring enough for their dad, even as she tried to prevent them from being with him during his final days.

Eventually Dad Garvey passed away, with his wife and children at his bedside.  But as the funeral director’s hearse pulled up to take the body to the funeral home, the same daughter disappeared into the basement, while the others comforted one another in their grief. 

It was a few days later that they discovered what the daughter had been doing.  Apparently, while she was keeping vigil by her father’s bedside, she was also surveying his belongings.  When he died, she quickly grabbed the things she had stashed in the final couple weeks of his life.  Mysteriously, even though Dad Garvey had prepared a will, it was never found.

This is a scary story, no doubt.  But imagine, for just a moment, how different this story would have gone if the parents had given serious consideration to dividing their estate prior to infirmity or death.  At the very least, they should have distributed a master list of what they wanted each child or heir to have, making sure that each child received a copy.  The will should have been given to the executor or another trusted professional, so it would have been available upon death. 

If every child knows the plan in advance, it will be much harder for one child to take the lion’s share.  Unfortunately, this scenario occurs every single day, because no one planned ahead!

© 2010 Julie Hall

My Christmas gift to your family

| Julie Hall

This has been a growing year for me, a chance to help people understand the necessity of preparation before death, and help avoid battles over stuff after death.  I have accumulated a wealth of suggestions, gleaned from nearly 20 years of experience handling personal property in estates.

My book, The Boomer Burden — Dealing With Your Parents’ Lifetime Accumulation of Stuff, provides practical and effective steps for liquidating and distributing your parents’ assets in a way that both honors them and promotes family harmony.

You’ve probably heard the stories:  arguments over stuff, an inheritance lost forever when parents are scammed, siblings estranged, or an adult heir taken from daily responsibilities for months while trying to empty their childhood home.

This book is valuable for both the senior adults and the Boomer children.  My trustworthy counsel covers the following areas:

  • Divide your parents’ estate with peace of mind
  • Minimize fighting with siblings during the estate settlement process
  • Clear out the family home in two weeks or less
  • Identify potential items of value in the home
  • Have “that conversation” with your parents
  • Prepare your own children for the future

Amazon.com carrys my book; you can purchase it in time for your family’s holiday celebrations.  If you have a close relationship with parents and siblings, you owe it to all to keep harmony in the home after the unexpected death of a parent.  If there are difficult relationships, distance between you and your parents, an accumulation of stuff in your parents’ home, and other thorny issues, please buy a copy of this book and save yourself even more pain and struggle.

One of the most distressing, yet integral parts of estate planning and liquidation is the division of personal property; who gets what?  A little talking now can go a long way to prevent squabbling between the heirs after mom and dad pass away.  For peaceful resolutions and wonderful guidance, please order The Boomer Burden.  It has earned wonderful reviews, and it makes a great gift for siblings, parents, children, even clients.

This is my Christmas gift to your family: a wealth of information and valuable resources to protect the relationship, sanity, and peace among your family.  The joy of preparation for the inevitable, and the kindness of knowing that everything is in order.  Merry Christmas!

P.S. I welcome your comments and questions, even suggested topics, at the link below this article.

© 2009 Julie Hall

Treasure Hunting at Home

| Julie Hall

It’s true that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure!  In my line of work, I spend my days deciphering what has value in estates, what is to be sent to donation, and what has no value.  Not long ago, I was asked to go through a home to evaluate its contents.  Many of the items were not in the best shape due to mold and mildew.  Many items were from the turn of the 20th century or before, and many of these had value.

Imagine the surprise when I found two old pottery vases in the basement that turned out to be a fantastic treasure!  When I mentioned to the executor that the vases had value, he was very surprised.  “They were headed for donation drop off because they are ugly,” he said.

This wonderful story is a glowing example that an appraiser cannot possibly know everything, but will use the knowledge he or she has to further investigate.  As it turned out after further research, the pieces were considerably more value than even the fine arts gallery realized.  One vase ended up selling for $57,500 because it possessed the marks of a very rare artist.  The second piece sold for $4,000.  Not a bad return on investment for a one hour visit from an estate expert.

In this case, it was a very happy ending for all the beneficiaries.  This follows the good and solid advice that you should know what you have before you sell or donate anything, even if it appears to be junk in your eyes.  Especially when dissolving the estate of a loved one, many things are sold or thrown out in haste to simply “get rid of them”. 

Knowing the value of what you have in your home will empower you against those that aim to exploit you, and they are everywhere.   Offer your children or heirs a clear understanding, so these heirlooms will not be sold at a garage sale one day for $1.00.  I can’t tell you how many fabulous items are sold at garage sales for pennies on the dollar. 

In this case, an ounce of prevention really paid off for this family!

© 2009 Julie Hall

Is there an expert in the house?

| Julie Hall

You can only imagine what I see each day as I venture into the homes of people getting ready to disolve the estate of a loved one who has passed away.  It is an amazing view into the world of human nature — who wants what, the fights over money and things, the greedy relatives coming out of the woodwork, families not understanding the value of things, etc.

You name it and I’ve seen it!  Not much seems to surprise me in the realm of estate settlement.

Having spent 18 years in perfecting the process of estate dissolution for my clients and those wanting to learn my area of expertise, I have uncovered a vast need in the country today that virtually no one is tending to.  And soon enough, it will be near epidemic level!  No one thinks about it until it actually happens and you find yourself in the midst of a crisis.

As our beloved parents leave the earth, they also leave behind one of the largest accumulations of stuff, more than any other generation in history.  The Depression Era is known for never throwing anything away, and not always very good at letting it go either.   Their parents, our grandparents, actually owned very little by comparison.  Therefore, their accumulation was not dealt with, but absorbed by our parents’ generation.  This leaves the boomer children with not only mom and dad’s stuff, but now they have to deal with multi-generational items at the same time.

As overwhelming as it is to handle the death of a parent, it becomes absolutely grueling when the kids have to dive into the estate face-first: divide the estate, handle feuds that arise, and clean out the house in a short period of time.

Then it occurred to me that the reason so many flounder in this area, is because there has never been anyone to show them how to go through the process in a logical and timely fashion.  No worries — help has arrived!

My book, The Boomer Burden — Dealing With Your Parents’ Lifetime Accumulation of Stuff, is a must-have book on how to go through the process from beginning to end, offering trustworthy guidance every step of the way.  More on that later…

© 2009 Julie Hall