Tag: wills

On wills and death binders and Swedish death cleaning

If you don’t have a will yet, read this: The consequences for loved ones if you die without a will.

Besides a will, you might also want to set up a death binder. For Toronto Star subscribers, you can read this, Death Binder 101: How to ease the lives of your survivors, but if you do a web search on “death binder”, you can find many pages devoted to the topic, such as this.

Since we are on the topic of your upcoming demise, I want to recommend to you this book:

 

Again, do a search on “swedish death cleaning” and you’ll see lots of  free material on the topic. But I recommend buying or borroing the book. Amazon has it here.

For those of you who find the process daunting, the NY Times has a good piece on how to break down the preparation.

 

 

 

Questions to ask your parents before they die are not just for parents

This is a good piece, and the list of questions here are certainly ones you’d like to have answers to: Questions to ask your parents before they die – Rossalyn Warren – Medium

I have a book called The Parents Book and it is has even more questions like this. I have not filled it out, but I really want to. Chances are my kids would want to have answers to some of these things. Family members would likely want that too. Regardless of whether or not you are a parent, or not, consider answering a list like this and put it with your Will and other essential documents. Your loved ones will be glad you did.

Helpful advice in preparing for dealing with the death of a parent

If you are fortunate, your parents are living and you have a good relationship with them. The dreaded day will come, though, when they die. It will be hard to deal with, no matter what advice you get, but this piece of advice will certainly help: Things I Wish I Had Known When My Mother Died :: YummyMummyClub.ca.

I would add: expect to deal with a lot of administrative tasks that will seem surreal at times. There is much more of it then you think. At best it will seem bizarre. At worst, it will be agony. Either way, it must get done, and if you don’t think you will be able to do it, consider who you would lean on to help you with it when the time comes.

(Thanks to Emma W for the pointer to this.)