My wife and I met with a lawyer this morning to draft a last will and testament.
Most people our age don’t have wills. Nobody plans on dying, but that’s even truer for people in their early 20’s.
Most people my age don’t have a lot of assets to dispense upon their deaths either.
I do because I inherited some money from my mother when she died a few years ago. From a certain point of view its a second will for her.
Our idea for the will is pretty simple. If one of us dies, that person’s property goes to the other marriage partner.
If we both die, our estate is split between our parents.
If our parents are dead it’s split between our siblings.
I’d be shocked if the followup to that happened, but if both of us, all of our parents, and all of our siblings were dead then our estate would be split between our aunts and uncles.
We hadn’t planned that last one out, but the attorney we spoke with said it was the default law. We figured we’d go with that.
We’d previously talked about donating to charity if our siblings couldn’t receive the money. We still might go back to that as well.
For now, the attorney gave us a questionnaire to draft a health care directive.
A health care directive is a piece of paper with instructions for your medical care if you’re unconscious or otherwise unable to describe your own wishes for your medical care.
So stuff like, “Would you want to be on life support if you are in a coma?”
Or, “Would you want if you were in a permanent vegetative state?”
“Would you like to be cremated, buried, or something else?” (Taxidermied is not one of the listed options)
“Would you like to donate your organs?” (You should)
“If you are donating organs, which ones are okay to donate? All of them or just a few of them?”
So we’ve got to go over all of that stuff and then get back to the attorney at a different time.
It feels like a nice adult thing to do with my wife, but its also depressing.
Part of it is exciting to be planning something so important with her.
I’m not bummed out so much about my own death or her death when we talk about the will. Those both still feel far enough away that I can act like I’m immortal.
It just gets me thinking about my mother’s and my sister’s deaths a lot. My wife feels the same way about it too.
-Mister Ed
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