I am a reasonably organized person and believe in being prepared. This is partly due to necessity since I arrived in the US alone in 1950 at the age of 16 and became financially independent at 19 ever since and achieved the American Dream. Thus, beginning in 1961 when I finished my Ph.D study, was married, and started my life time job, I had trust and will prepared by lawyer to make sure my family will survive should I die prematurely. Since then I have them updated every couple of decades just to keep pace with changing estate and inheritance law. My last update was in 2023-2025 lasting over two years (at a leisurely pace to be sure since this was not a pressing issue) costing over $6K. Last week, the retirement community where my wife and I currently reside offered a seminar entitled “survivor guide”. It is basically a review for seniors based on the book titled “I am dead so what next?”. I went to the seminar not so much to learn but to be re-assured that I am well prepared. Imagine my surprise when I learned many new information that I did not know and tasks not what more I should have done but what could have done to make lives much simpler for my heirs. These are things/advices my lawyer never told me and I did not know. Yes, they did their job well and our family are prepared for the passing of my wife and I and have no worry about legal entanglement and mistakes. But now I know additional tasks that I can do to simplify things for my children. For example, most people have a safe deposit box where they keep important documents such as passports, birth certificate, naturalization papers, and deeds to real estate properties. What is not generally known is the fact if your legal heirs need to gain access to your safe deposit box after your death it is a very involved and time consuming process. They will need legal help which may be costly or time consuming to do. What one can do is to make one trusted child as co-owner of the saft deposit box or simply do not use a safe deposit box (we have actually done so several years ago because we don’t feel we needed the box anymore). Another more familiar advice -are your beneficiary list on various properties up-to-date and consistent with your latest trust and will. A third consideration is that the average funeral expense for a middle class family is about $10,000. Let us say both you and your partner die in a traffic accident, Does you children have the ability to fund a $15K expense suddenly. They may simply be too young to have such ready fund available before they can have their inheritance. This is the main reason for the mushrooming of TV ads for the no question, no medical exam life insurance pitched to people between the ages 40-85. Lastly, how many automatic payment accounts for subscription and other recurring expenses do you have. On the other side, there are income sources such as social security need to be turned off. Finally there is the list of telephone numbers of people to notify. The list of such things/information goes on and on. There are books and pamphlets called “survivor guides” for you to read and do them. You children should also be told where to find everything in order to execute and inherit your estate plan (such as the list of passwords for your various computer accounts). Your children will thank and long remember you when you are prepared and did these things for them !!!

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