How do you avoid a family melt-down? Who wants WHAT? WHY? And HOW to divide equitably?
My experience counseling families allows me to suggest the following:
Step One
Discuss what your kids want with each of them. Try to keep spouses outside of the conversation. Find out WHY they want what they do. Make notes. Add to these notes YOUR knowledge of an object’s history and meaning to YOU as you edit the notes. Sign and date.
Step Two
Speak with your attorney about a “personal property memorandum” as an attachment to your will. The research in step ONE will help.
Step Three
Sentimental Objects? These might cause PROBLEMS. Let’s break them down into two categories; the simple non-valuable treasures, and the valuable objects.
A Simple non-valuable
Send out a list/spreadsheet/photo file of what YOU think are the real small treasures. Or if you don’t want to work that hard, ASK each kid what they think of as sentimental, and why.
Here’s a tried and true action plan: my mother made four big cardboard boxes labelled with four sibling’s names. As she built her wish list in conjunction with ours, she put what SHE chose for each kid in each box. For example, each box holds photos she loves for each of us, school and memory papers, and meaningful small objects. Examples? For me, I bet I’ll find a green piano book of music she and I read from, making musical notes in the late 1970’s. For my brother, it’ll be his Zippy Monkey. My sister, I bet she’ll find a cassette tape of her first theatrical audition and ensuing playbill. For my younger brother, I’ll wager his personalized Superhero Cape will be found. Each box ALSO contains five objects for each of us from my mother’s family and from HER treasures.
Valuable Sentimental Objects (jewelry, heritage artworks, sterling tableware, stamp and coin collections, etc.)
My suggestion for this category? The PARENT decides who gets what, and makes it very clear ON the object or in a letter ABOUT the object. Wording as to the designation might go into that “personal property memorandum” you attach to your will. Because this last category is the Touchiest, I’ve seen the combination of value, heritage, and emotion become combustible around such things. Thus, I suggest you tackle this category sooner rather than later, as you might be “up there” listening to fights among the kids if you do NOT!
END NOTES!
A WSJ article by Glenn Ruffenach quoted suggestions from his readers as to how to tackle this problem. Here are a few:
A Mock Auction with Monopoly money to “buy” objects among the kids and cousins.- Parent awards each child a hundred points to “acquire” a total of ten valuable items; each kid puts the number of points on each object as to their level of interest.
- Two sisters agreed on the perceived value of pairs of objects: a pair of similarly valued objects were segregated, and each sister took turns selecting ONE from each pair.
AND THEN THERE’S ALWAYS sitting around the table and…pulling long and short straws!