Top reasons we keep stuff: we want to leave things to people when we die.
This is another post in a series exploring the top reasons we keep stuff, according to David Ekerdt, professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of Kansas. Dr. Ekerdt has spent his career interviewing and studying people, digging into their attachment to their belongings and trying to understand why we hang onto our things so much. He developed this list of the top reasons we keep things:
It seems useful.
We think it is worth money.
It gives us pleasure.
It represents us.
We may need it one day.
It was a gift.
Conservation is a virtue.
Legacy – we want to leave things to people when we die.
We keep because we can.
Today we’re looking at reason number 8: we keep something because we want to leave it to somebody when we die.
I think a fair amount about legacy. This may sound odd until you understand that I have spent the past fifteen years working with estates. We are often the first people to walk into the home of someone who has died. We see, firsthand, exactly what people leave behind.
Most people think of their legacy as a positive thing. They think of the money or other assets that they will leave to the people they love. Or maybe they think of a cherished family heirloom, and the joy their kids or grandkids, nieces or nephews will take in taking possession of the object and all the family history that accompanies it.
This is natural. We like our things and we assume that future generations will also like them, one day.
But there is more to it than this. When you leave something to someone, you are also leaving them the responsibility of caring for that thing. If you leave a lot of things to someone, you are leaving them a lot to deal with. In your opinion these are wonderful gifts you are leaving them, but they may not share your opinion about each piece and they may even find that the inheritance becomes a bit of a problem to them.
And here is the irony. The legacy you were hoping to impart on this person you love is no longer the legacy of a nice collection of things, the legacy is now the burden you have placed on the recipient. When they think of you, they won’t necessarily think fondly about the gifts you left them. They may, in fact, be annoyed when they think of you.
Years ago we were hired by Brian, a lovely man who was the executor of his aunt’s estate (we’ll call her Sally). His Aunt Sally had been well-loved by him and a whole bunch of other nieces and nephews. She had been married but decided not to have kids, which was a rare decision for women of her generation. Instead of raising kids, she devoted herself to music and the arts and she collected a lot of fancy jewelry and clothes.
Her nieces and nephews loved to visit, and a highlight of each visit was when she would pull out her jewelry boxes and show them all her “diamonds.” She let them try things on and play with the collection.
Sally had told Brian, years earlier, that her jewelry was all costume, but she asked him to keep it a secret. She told him not to try to sell it all because he wouldn’t get much money for it. She wanted to just make sure that anyone in the family who wanted any of it could take it.
So Brian had us prepare an inventory of it all and shared it with the roughly fifteen family members Sally had mentioned in her will. He told them each to select their favorite pieces so he could divide it all up fairly. He told them that it was costume jewelry without much value.
The problem was that some of the family members didn’t believe him and persisted in believing what Sally had told them for so many years: that it was all valuable. One niece, it turns out, thought the collection could fetch millions of dollars at auction. She didn’t want her cousins and siblings to get any of it. She wanted to sell it and make them all rich. She brought in a lawyer and was able to put the whole process on hold.
Brian could barely speak about all of this. He was just completely distraught that Sally’s jewelry would cause all this tension. Sally wanted to leave her family happy memories of her, but instead she was leaving them embroiled in a contentious battle.
Another estate was equally heart-breaking. In this case a wealthy lawyer (we’ll call him Doug) died and left a lot of valuable assets to his two grown children. The complication was that the children had had a falling out years earlier and were not on speaking terms.
But Doug knew this and had prepared what he thought was a conflict-proof plan. He had a well-written, detailed, will that stipulated that a lot of his things – two properties, some nice cars, fine art, family jewelry, etc. – were to be sold, with the proceeds divided equally between his two kids. This all happened according to plan and each child was left with a decent amount of money.
What Doug didn’t anticipate was that his kids would fight over all the other stuff. To him the rest of it was just everyday furniture and décor, and not worth even mentioning in his will. But it wound up causing years of conflict between his two kids.
There is a pretty standard way to handle the distribution of nice-but-not-valuable belongings: we prepare an inventory and each heir gets to pick their first choice, then we do another round, and another, until we get to the point where everybody has all that they want. Then the rest can be donated or sold for a small amount of money.
The problem in this situation was that neither of his kids wanted the other to get anything they wanted. That’s how deep the tension ran. When the properties were being sold, all of this excess, standard, stuff had to be moved to a storage site and kept until there could be a resolution about the distribution of it all. And there it all sat while the kids fought one another in expensive litigation.
Finally, years later, we were hired to empty the storage units. We made an inventory of the contents, and then the lawyers fought back and forth over the inventory until a distribution plan was finally formed. It took another full year to complete all of this. I couldn’t even imagine what it must have felt like for these two kids to receive these very standard things, including Crate & Barrel dishware, worn-out paperback novels, and everyday furniture, after all that time, money, and fighting.
It’s sad to think that in both these cases the deceased had only hoped that the inheritance would bring joy to their loved ones. It makes me wonder what they would have done differently if they had any idea that the objects they left behind would cause so much pain.
The best solution I have found, to avoid all of this, is to give things to people before you die. Instead of smiling to yourself and thinking “someday my grandson will be so happy to receive this watch,” give him the watch now. This way you get to enjoy seeing him receive the watch – you can maintain more control over your legacy. You can also take the time to ask people, in person, what they would like to inherit from you.
The other solution is to just keep a really good list of everything there is to be distributed. The more detail the better. If you know your granddaughter has always loved a particular painting, for example, be very clear in your legacy documents (your will or trust, for example) that you want her to have it. My husband’s grandmother started putting Post-it notes on the backs of everything she owned. If anyone admired anything in her apartment, she would put their name on a note and affix it. It was a little morbid, I’ll admit, but she made it so much easier to distribute her belongings. Of course, a detailed legal will is much better than Post-it notes.
Legacy can be a positive thing, but it has to be managed carefully. We like to think it’s pretty easy to leave behind a record of our lives in all the objects we owned, but it’s much more complicated than that. The key, to me, seems to be being open to preparing for your own death. This is not something a lot of people find easy to do. I know people in their eighties who won’t even mention the thought that they may die someday. But if you can come to terms with it, you can actually help everyone you love handle your death. Your legacy can be taking steps now to help them grieve for you later.
