Yesterday, I went to Baltimore with the intention of visiting a friend in hospice. Her health had taken a sharp nosedive over the weekend, and on Monday evening, the doctors said she maybe had a week left.
What actually happened was I went to Baltimore to help clean out her stuff, because she died at 8:44 on Tuesday morning and my plane didn't land until 8:50. So me and another friend helped another friend/her roommate (before hospice) find important documents, as well as save sentimental items for her actual loved ones because her family, well.
Her friends were her family. But because she died intestate, the people in her family of choice were entitled to nothing under the law. Instead of her beloved, disabled partner, her estranged family has legal rights to her savings bonds and the rest of her estate. (Sometimes common-law partners can inherit but they weren't together long enough to meet that criterion.)
I knew this was coming for a long time. You don't recover from the brain cancer she had. But it still really hurts. And knowing that people she hadn't spoken to in years are getting that money instead of the person she loved most... well, that hurts too.
Please, if you don't have one already, make a will. It's not hard. We don't like to think about it, because nobody likes thinking about post-death legal matters, but you need to make a will. If you're in the US, you can use websites like Free Will. You don't need an estate attorney or anything like that. In many states, a notarized letter is fine. I don't know enough about international estate law to say anything in that regard, but take half an hour to google estate laws in your jurisdiction and put together a will.
If something happened to you tomorrow, who do you want taking care of your pets? Do you have a collection of anything that you want looked after? Do you want your money to go to a person, a charity, or something else specific? If you don't have kids, everything reverts to a spouse. If you don't have a spouse, it goes to your parents. I know I don't want to burden my parents with figuring out what to do with my tegu, my skeletal collection, or my library. But if I died tomorrow, my will would take care of all of that. Thinking about mortality isn't fun, but dying intestate is worse. Make a will.
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“Fundamental”
Components of reality living in an abstract space.
Barry Onic and his pal work at the reality assortment warehouse, dodging the physics between them.
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