What about heirlooms?
You can make specific provisions for family heirlooms and specialty items in your Estate Plan. Many times the family heirlooms or special personal items are considered the most important or emotionally valuable part of any Estate. In other words, your Grandfather’s watch that he wore every day may be more important to you than any amount of money he might leave you. I know of one family in Ohio that share custody between three families of the Grandmother’s giant, oversized, iron frying skillet. They rotate it between the three adult grandchildren’s families monthly.
In our client’s Estate Plans, many will make specific distributions of specific items such as jewelry, guns, tools, cars, pieces of furniture, collections of books, paintings, antiques, pictures, music, etc. Often it is distributed in a Memorandum of Property that may be referred to in the Living Trust. This way it is more flexible for the Trustmaker to add or subtract items in an outside list that they keep with the Living Trust, as opposed to having it written inside the Living Trust itself.
You will also see Wills that leave specific items of personal property to certain people or charities. The downside of having it inside the Will or Living Trust is that it takes a more formal modification to change that. That is why some people like a Memorandum of Personal Property that is referred to and signed outside the Living Trust and kept with the Living Trust.
At the Law Firm of Steven Andrew Jackson, Attorney and Counselor at Law, we have helped hundreds of families protect themselves and their loved ones, avoid Estate Taxes and Probate Costs, and keep their Estate Plans current with the law through The Customized Protective Estate Planning Solution™.