Introduction & Opening Remarks
Michelle Dexter: Well, good morning everyone. I hope you guys are doing well today. Good to see you all. Thanks for joining me this morning. Um, we’ve got kind of an interesting topic here—something that we hear a lot from our clients about concerns about the sentimental things, um, jewelry, antiques, family heirlooms, those types of things. So, we thought we’d bring that to you today in a presentation and hopefully give you some ideas on different ways and methods that you can use to handle some of those things.
Uh, first I got to give you my disclaimers, all the legal notices. This is not intended as legal advice. This is more for educational purposes. Uh, and we definitely encourage you to talk to your professionals in your lives if you have any questions or specific concerns about how to handle certain things. Okay. Um, and while we’re on that subject, at the end I will have an opportunity to ask questions. I want you to keep in mind that when you’re asking questions, this is a recorded uh, and public forum.
00:06:29
Michelle Dexter: And so when you’re asking questions, I highly encourage you to keep detailed private information out of the question and do your best to kind of limit it to more of a generic question type of thing. Those of you who are clients—I see many familiar faces—you guys are always welcome to reach out to us with specific questions that maybe you don’t want to ask online, so don’t hesitate to do that. Okay.
Defining Personal Property and Heirlooms
So, what’s included in the goods that we’re talking about, right? We’re really talking about personal property. We’re not talking about bank accounts. We’re not talking about real property. We’re not talking about assets that have a true title to them, vehicles, and those types of things. We’re talking about the jewelry, the collectibles, the appliances, the artwork, the collections, the photos and videos, memorabilia. You know, when you’re thinking about family heirlooms, you’re thinking about grandma’s jewelry or grandpa’s tools, maybe items made by a family member. Those types of things are what we’re talking about today. Okay?
00:07:29
Why Sentimental Items Matter
Michelle Dexter: So, why does it even matter, right? For some of us, we’ve lived with it for so long, nobody’s really taken any interest in it, and then suddenly when we’re gone, everybody’s fighting over it, right? And we’re like, you didn’t care for 50 years—why is it suddenly so important to you now, right? These types of items carry a tangible link to the past, to their history, to their culture. It can remind people of a story, of certain memories. It can just bring them joy, right? So, we want to be respectful of that.
Certain items can carry an emotional connection rather than having any actual monetary value. For most of us, we know it’s not worth much to anybody else outside the family; they probably don’t care. Um, it can link them to their family identity. It can provide a historical connection. It may simply be useful for them and they want to be able to use that.
00:08:22
Michelle Dexter: I know my mom has a couple of kitchen items that really have no even sentimental value, but you just can’t find good things like some of those things anymore. So, uh, you know, not that I’ve put in a request with her or anything like that, but those are things that I think of like, hey, I probably wouldn’t give that out in a garage sale or to Goodwill; I would probably keep that for myself. So, just keep in mind that what you might see as junk, another person could consider as treasure. So we want to keep in mind history, culture, family, what it means to them, emotions, their connection, and what they consider to have sentimental value. Okay?
And so it’s always good if you can to go ahead and have the conversations with the family members, whether that’s your children, whether that’s your nieces and nephews or your siblings or anybody else who may have some kind of connection to these types of items. Now, when we do that, we run the risk of multiple people wanting that, right?
00:09:19
Michelle Dexter: So, we’ve got some different options for how we handle the division of those types of items. The options available can vary based off of what the item is, what the condition of that item is, what the value is, who has the connections to it. But consider the people who value these items, right? Um, sometimes people will fight to get things just to fight to get things, just to keep that other person from getting it. Whereas a lot of times there are people that really truly in their heart want it—they really feel that connection and it’s important to them for a reason other than just being spiteful.
So, we’ll talk a little bit about assigning specific items to specific people, creating a system for distribution, and then there’s always the option of just letting them figure it out for themselves. I get that a lot with clients who are just like, “I’ll be gone, not going to worry about it.” Right?
Method 1: Assigning Specific Items
So, when we’re looking at assigning specific items to people,
00:10:19
Laura Bowden: Is…
Michelle Dexter: …right, the old-fashioned method, you may remember a grandparent or somebody kind of doing that, placing the sticky note with a person’s name on the back of the item or underneath the item, and when you were gone, they were just going to look at the sticky notes, right?
Laura Bowden: …this right?
Michelle Dexter: Today, our trusts provide a method that allows us to go ahead and specify specific things going to specific people. Okay? And so that’s one of the nice things within our trust is that it does say if you have a specific list of specific items going to specific people, your trustee is obligated to follow that, right? Um, that’s a much better way than the sticky notes, which—if there is somebody with an ill intent—could easily modify those sticky notes, right? “Oh, that one was missing” or “that one was actually over here. You mean you didn’t want this picture frame? You really wanted that piece of artwork over there. So, sorry, I’m just following where the sticky notes are,” right?
00:11:21
Michelle Dexter: Um, so taking pictures of items can also be helpful, but just keep in mind that sticky notes don’t guarantee the right people receive the things you want them to be receiving. You also want to keep in mind that if you give items to people during your lifetime, you may want to note that that distribution has been accomplished so that your agents aren’t wasting time looking for items already given away. Okay?
I have heard occasionally of people that have promised something to one person and then change their mind and give it to somebody else. And so you want to make sure that that’s your right to do. Absolutely your right to do—it’s your item. You are free to give it to whoever you want to. But rather than creating a conflict between those two people, you’re going to want to identify that you have taken that action and that you have made that distribution to somebody other than who thought that they might be receiving it, because that a lot of times is an area of contention.
00:12:20
Michelle Dexter: Somebody gave it to a grandchild and not to that grandchild’s aunt, and now the aunt is looking at her brother like, “How did your kid end up with something that I was supposed to end up with?” And now we’ve got siblings that are fighting because, you know, grandma or grandpa gave something to a grandchild that they wanted to give to them, and it is their right to give to them. So just make sure that you’re communicating that, whether that’s in writing or during your lifetime. Okay.
Um, this method of assigning specific items does allow you to give things away as you want to while balancing—or not balancing; you know, for some people it is really important to equalize distributions and other people are not worried about equalizing those distributions—according to your wishes. So just know that assigning specific items doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind, right? It’s just kind of doing what you can to identify some of those things so that the person who’s going to be making the distributions or cleaning up the house or making the donations has some good information on what your wishes are for those things.
00:13:23
The Thought Behind the Gift
Michelle Dexter: Okay? And just keep in mind that it’s not always about the item, but sometimes it’s about the thought. Um, my grandmother, when she passed away—each of her daughters-in-law, she had seven children, five of them were boys, so she had five daughters-in-law—she made sure that each of them got back the piece of jewelry that they had bought for her during her lifetime. And so it wasn’t the value of the item. It wasn’t, you know, the importance of the item. It was more the thought of making sure that those things went back to the people that gave them to her. And I know that for my aunts, that was a special feeling for them to be remembered in that way. So it’s not always about the item, but sometimes it’s about the thought. So returning gifts given to you, setting aside something special for a grandchild or a special friend… knowing that they were thought of and planned for leaves that lasting positive memory for them.
Uh, for a lot of you clients, you may have heard me tell the story of when my grandfather passed away.
00:14:21
Michelle Dexter: I had a cousin who was somewhere between 8 and 10—I don’t remember exactly when. And he was very close to my grandfather, and it was the first death that he had experienced and he was really having a hard time with it. And my uncle said to him, “Grandpa left you this pen.” And I’m pretty sure it had an insurance company name on it; the pen was nothing special. But for my cousin, he took that pen like my grandfather had risen from the grave and given him one last kiss or something. You know, it was a very special memory for my cousin even though the item itself wasn’t anything important. So, I just always encourage people to take that into consideration. You know, some people like to leave a legacy of information and some people like to leave a legacy of thoughtful gifts, um, whether they have value or not. Okay.
Method 2: Establishing a System for Distribution
Another way that people like to do it when they don’t want to get into the process of giving specific things to specific people is making sure that there’s some kind of system in place.
00:15:26
Michelle Dexter: Okay? And there’s lots of different options when you’re looking at different systems, right? Um, traditional flip a coin: let’s figure out who’s going to take the first turn. Uh, and when you have a couple of people that want to share in various household items, that can be a good way—kind of a round-robin. We’re going to randomly pick who goes first and everybody’s going to have a chance to go through and pick an item until all the items are gone or everybody has taken what they want to take, right?
Another option is letting people bid on the items that they’re interested in acquiring. And sometimes some of these systems may work together, right? And so they can bid on any items that they’re interested in acquiring, and whatever the highest bid is, that money is going to go into the pot that gets distributed among the beneficiaries. This really works well when you have several people interested in the same item. The highest bidder wins, just like in the free market.
00:16:27
Michelle Dexter: Okay. Um, beneficiaries aren’t always so happy about it because you may have an uneven balance of power when it comes to money between your beneficiaries, so you want to kind of balance some of that. It may be the type of thing where, you know, you say instead of money, “We’re going to give you Monopoly money or so many tickets, and so you get to use those,” that type of thing.
You can always just simply hold an estate sale and tell beneficiaries they can come and purchase along with the neighbors and anybody else who shows up, right? Let the estate company deal with people who are bidding over things and figuring that out, right?
Um, if you have one specific item with several interested parties, you can put their names in a hat and choose a name, right? Completely random, completely fate. My aunt did that—my great-aunt, I should say. She had four daughters and one engagement ring, and she was having a hard time with who would get it.
00:17:27
Michelle Dexter: So she made them go to lunch together. They all put their names in a hat, one of them drew a name out, and that was the one that received it, and she felt like that was the fairest method she could come up with. Okay.
You can also group items together and let them choose by the group of items, right? Um, that works well when you’re trying to get rid of the stuff, right? You’re going to get a really great item with five items that maybe nobody really cares about, but we’re going to clean this house out and you’re going to take the whole lot, right? And so maybe each group of things has something special in it and you get to choose one group, but you take the whole thing.
Um, some people will let people mark the items that they want in advance, and if only one person chooses that item, that’s great—they can have it. But if multiple people are interested in the item, you’ve got to consider how those other systems may come into play.
00:18:21
Michelle Dexter: Sometimes you’re just going to choose: “Okay, I’ve got two people both interested in two different items. I’m going to say Person A gets this item and Person B gets the other item,” and I’m just going to decide, or we’re going to let them figure out a different way to kind of decide who’s going to get what.
Handling Photos and Digital Duplication
Keep in mind that some things like photos can be duplicated and shouldn’t have to be limited to one beneficiary. We have some really great technology nowadays. When my grandmother passed away, everybody in the family knew that I was big on photos and photo albums and those types of things. My grandmother, as I mentioned, had seven kids, and I felt really guilty having all of that to myself. It didn’t seem like that was a fair way to handle things, and I didn’t know who else might want certain pictures. Most of my family is on the East Coast and I live here in Arizona, so it wasn’t like I could just say, “Let’s go around and see who wants what.”
00:19:18
Michelle Dexter: So, what I ended up doing is I scanned all of the photo albums. I actually made it into a relatively decent-sized project and tried to put the photos in kind of age order. I put it together on a video and I put music from the different time eras. I reached out to my aunts and uncles and got what were grandma and grandpa’s favorite songs during these time periods, so then I played songs as the pictures rolled by. And I was able to make copies of that and give it to every one of my aunts and uncles and cousins and everybody so that everybody had copies of all of the pictures, and they could look at them anytime that they wanted. And I let them know if there was ever a picture that they wanted to let me know, because I now had them all scanned and I could just send them the picture to be shared by everybody, and everybody could print out a copy of it if they wanted to.
So definitely, you know, keep in mind some things like that.
00:20:20
Michelle Dexter: I feel a lot of times for me personally, the photos are the really precious things. Those are some great memories, but there’s no reason, especially in today’s day and age, that we can’t duplicate some of those things and let everybody who wants them have them. Okay.
Practical Considerations for Distribution
So, when you’re creating a system, one or a couple of things you want to consider, right? Will they be able to coordinate time to get together to execute the system? Right? If all the things are located in your house, but all of your beneficiaries live in different states, when is the time that they’re going to be able to come through the house and identify what things that they want? Is that something that they might be able to do virtually, you know, through a video meeting like this, where one person is kind of managing all of that and sharing what the items are? How are they going to get those things to the beneficiaries if they are remote and not there to just take it themselves?
00:21:16
Michelle Dexter: And also keep in consideration your beneficiaries. Okay, there are often times where—I have three kids myself, and they are three very different people. At times, they may have difficulty finding their voice to express that they want something against other beneficiaries who may be more vocal. So if you’re concerned that you’ve got a beneficiary that won’t stand up for themselves—or I don’t want to say fight for, but, you know, express their strong interest in having something—it may be the type of thing that you don’t want to put them in a position where they’re going to have to compete for an item. You may just want to name them as the beneficiary of some specific things so that you don’t have to have that conflict. Those people don’t have to walk away feeling like they didn’t get what they wanted because they couldn’t stand up to the other beneficiaries. Or, you know, sometimes the dynamics between people can be interesting.
So just keep that in mind when you’re thinking about what type of system you might want to use to divide assets and to divide things.
00:22:23
Method 3: The “Let It Go” Philosophy and Avoiding Conflict
Michelle Dexter: Okay? So definitely keep some of those things in mind. Um, and then, you know, there’s the “let it go” philosophy. Some people just don’t want to overthink it; they want the beneficiaries to figure it out amongst themselves. And that’s fine, right? Like, at the end of the day, you have the right to let them just figure it out and you don’t have to worry about it. While it’s definitely an easier option for you, it can potentially result in unnecessary conflict between beneficiaries that can result in long-term damage of relationships.
And one of the things, you know, with my mom being part of such a bigger family, and I’ve seen a lot of what I interpret as unnecessary conflict… for me, it’s really important to do what I can to help avoid the conflict. You know, people grieve differently. People value things differently. People just have different personalities. They respect things differently and honor things in different ways. And so being aware of those types of things and how those types of conflicts may occur when you’re gone… the last thing that I want is a fight over a piece of artwork or a piece of jewelry to be the final thing that breaks their relationship at a time when they may be needing to come together to grieve together and honor your memory and to respect the life and the memories that you guys have provided.
00:23:51
Michelle Dexter: Okay? So spend some time considering what you have, who your beneficiaries are, and what may be important to them. Ask them if they think there’s a fair way to address the items that may be wanted by more than one person, and see if, you know, if they can come up with a system themselves, then the burden’s off of you—they’ve kind of decided that. But at the end of the day, it is completely up to you who gets what. That is really a “you” decision. It is your asset or assets, and you are entitled to make that decision.
So if you choose to make the decisions, feel good about it. Stand by it. If you don’t want to make the decision, just keep in mind, you know, how are the beneficiaries going to react? How are they going to be able to handle this? What does that look like in actuality? Are they all coming to the house? Are they all going to be in the same room at the same time?
00:24:43
Michelle Dexter: Are they going to be able to go through the things and identify what they want in a fair and reasonable manner that’s not going to cause additional conflict for them? Okay, and that basically brings me to the end of my suggestions on how to handle those sentimental items.
Q&A and Closing Remarks
I am more than happy to answer questions, but do remember, as I mentioned earlier, this is a public forum and this is a recorded video that will be presented later, so information can be shared. You’ve got two choices: you can unmute yourself and ask a question, or alternatively, there’s a chat box down at the bottom right—it kind of looks like one of those speech bubbles from an old cartoony type of thing—and you can always type a message in there. Okay.
So we do, here at Keystone, have done quite a number of presentations. Those can all be found on our YouTube channel if you search YouTube for Keystone Law Firm. There’s a lot of great information that we’re trying to get out.
00:25:49
Michelle Dexter: We’re trying to base it off of questions that we normally get from clients that we think other clients would be benefiting from hearing. Uh, but we encourage you to look at some of those videos. Sometimes the information is just a repeat of what you may have heard from us here in the office. We have a firm belief that you have to hear things probably seven times before it really starts to sink in. So, if you’re struggling with “Why do I have a trust versus a will?”, “What are the beneficiary protections?”, um, you know, some different things like that, we definitely encourage you to review those YouTube videos and share them with other people you think might benefit from the information.
Francisco’s next webinar is going to be on September 23rd at noon. It’s going to be talking about an intro to wills and trusts. I know a lot of you have those already because you’re familiar faces to me. But again, sometimes we lose sight of “Why do I have this? Why is this important?”
00:26:49
Michelle Dexter: Um, Francisco will also be doing another webinar in early October—October 7th: “We have about $3 million to retire. How much of it is actually going to the IRS and how to fix that?” Okay. I know that that’s a big topic of conversation right now. People going into retirement, they’ve got concerns and they haven’t really planned for what the tax consequences are going to be once they’re in retirement and they have fewer options for strategizing for some of those tax things. So, if that’s something that you are interested in or know somebody—maybe you have a child who might be interested in some of those things—please, these webinars, our goal for them is for our clients. We’re trying to share information that we believe our clients would be interested in, but they are open to the public.
So, for those of you looking to help another friend or family member with some information, we are based here in Arizona, so we don’t practice in states outside of Arizona. Some of our information can carry over to other states, but again, if you have specific questions and you’re out of state, consult with your local attorney about what the rules are for your state.
00:27:55
Michelle Dexter: I really appreciate you guys coming and spending your morning—about half an hour with me this morning. I do really appreciate it. I’m happy to stick around and answer any questions that anybody may have, but definitely check out our other webinars and our YouTube channel for more information. Uh, thank you guys. We love doing these, and so having you guys show up to actually attend them just validates that the information is something that you guys are interested in.
And if you have any suggestions for future webinars, feel free to send those over to us. We’re happy to take suggestions, and we try to just brainstorm when we get together and talk about the questions that clients have been asking or things that have been brought up on our probate side or our trust administration side. Whenever things get a little dicey over there, we try to incorporate some of those things into our webinars so that we’re educating people on the dos and don’ts, and how just to make it as easy for your family as possible, because I think that that’s what most of you are searching for.
So, thank you again for your time today. Feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions, and we will talk to you soon. Thanks so much, everyone. Have a great day.
Yes, Gay. Let me see if I can… I can’t unmute you.
Gayathri: No, no. I was just—I was just saying hi.
Michelle Dexter: But there you—oh!
Gayathri: Bye.
Michelle Dexter: Perfect. Thank you so much. Have a great day, you guys.
Gayathri: Thank you. You too. Thanks. Bye.
Michelle Dexter: Bye.
