anyway....after edgar butler/kim/e.b./emily were all killed in the wreck, i started thinking about lots of stuff. so if you are not a planner, you may not want to read this blog post....
tommy and i had a will done right after we married. with us both being only children, it was important to me to have everything "mapped out" the way we wanted it. especially concerning life insurance policies, etc.
i always thought that an attorney had to prepare a will for you. tommy talked to one of his friends/customers who is a lawyer and he said that that isn't the case! so ours is just typed up!
after mary peyton was born, we revised that will and we now update it about every summer.
in it, we have 3 scenarios:
1. the death of one of us (parents)
2. the death of both of us (parents)
3. the death of all 3 of us (us and mpb)
i know this sounds morbid - and i know tons of people who have never even thought of a will. please let me encourage you to do so!!! and set out all of the scenarios because you never know which one will have to be used. it's a sad thought, but so true - as our family found out almost 2 weeks ago.
but don't stop there.
once you make up your will, show it and explain it to someone who DOES NOT live in your household. let them know where you keep it in case it is ever needed. if i told tommy and then we were in a fatal accident and we had kept that information between the two of us, it would be a mess...
here is more about what we have in our will:
1. because we are both only children, we have mary peyton's guardian named in our will. it is not automatic that your family gets custody of your child if you die. this was of utmost importance to me.
2. material possessions: i have certain ways to handle things in each scenario and all of these are mapped out in our will. i have pieces that have been inherited from one side of the family or the other, so i have a "liason" named from each side to handle this situation.
3. how we want insurance money distributed/handled in case we all die at one time (a scholarship set up, our church, individuals, etc.). i also have our insurance agent's name and the different policies that we have listed. we also have any investment information listed.
4. where we want to be buried (we have had this for a while but have not purchased our plots - we are doing that in the next few weeks...)
5. information concerning our lock box
6. the attorney that we want present with our families to discuss the will if it is needed.
i now need to go through and want to put down aspects of our service that we want. yes, this sounds morbid. but it's a part of life! music, pallbearers, etc. i want it all down.....it is less that my family will have to think about if the unexpected happens...
anytime we go out of town on a vacation, i take a box with discs of all of our digital pictures (and the external hard drive), a copy of our will, our lockbox key, and jewelry to someone in town just in case anything happened.
i'm sure edgar butler and kim thought they would just be back in inverness in a few days, but as we all know, God's plans were not theirs. if that happened to us, i just want things lined out with our wishes....
4 comments:
I think it's so important to plan. It's so helpful to the family of the person who has passed away, as I've witnessed so many times. That, and I'll probably want to be a control freak even after I've died.
Love you millions.
Thank you for sharing this. It is a difficult subject to think or even talk about. I was sharing some of this out loud with Hugh a few minutes ago, and we were both kind blown away, because we haven't talked about, much less planned, a lot of what you've covered here. So, it is something we need to sit down and get serious about. Thanks! -and Blessings!
GREAT POST!!!!!
wow my mind is spinning. cecil and i need to do this. and you thought of things i would have never even thought about. thanks!
Post a Comment