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qsz comments on Open thread, July 21-27, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Against all odds, it turns out I'm a grown-up now. If I die, go missing, or am rendered incapable of looking after myself, significant sums of money become available to my next-of-kin. I've started assembling a document for them to hold onto in case of these eventualities.
I have two questions to throw at LWers who may have dealt with this sort of thing before:
1) The whole process of making a will seems a bit excessive to my needs. I don't have a complicated estate or children or anything, and trust my next-of-kin to respect my wishes or act in my best interests if it becomes necessary. Solicitor's fees seem like an unnecessary expense. I just want to collect all the salient details into one location for convenience. Are there any good reasons why I might want to revise this judgement?
2) The basic document so far consists of a list of bank accounts, financial assets, insurance policy numbers, contact numbers for my GP, workplace, etc., and miscellaneous other details that might prove useful. Are there any sensible bits of information I might want to bundle up with this that I probably haven't thought about?
Regarding your first point: if your immediate next-of-kin is unable to take care of things, do you trust whoever is next-nearest to respect your wishes? How confident are you that this will still be the case after time (t) has passed?
My experience with a few friends and relatives: often such informal estate planning is done as a one-off, in a moment of forward thinking, and then left as is, sometimes for years. Unexpected changes in the views of the next of kin (in my family's case, various religious conversions) led to all kinds of family disputes related to different opinions about what the desires and intentions of the deceased might have been - and whether they are even relevant if none were formally expressed.