You've got an estate!

Most people are not aware it applies to them – even if they are not wealthy

By Executor's Resource, Inc.

Who, me? An estate holder? Don't make me laugh. Wait, let me call Jeeves the butler and have him fix me a sherry (giggle). I'm looking around my house and see the repairs that have to be made. I see an old bike hanging in the garage, hockey skates. My trusty lawn mower. Now there's a 20-year old relic. Really, people like me don't have to worry about estate planning. I don't have an estate.

If you are thinking like the guy above, you are in for a surprise. You've got an estate. You have scrapbooks, photos, memories, books, even that old lawn mower that started every time is part of your estate. And some of it probably has financial value you don't realize, equity in your home (despite its repair needs), a small company insurance policy lying around, the porcelain collection that's collecting cobwebs in the basement. It's all part of an estate.

But maybe we should do away with the word "estate," itself, says financial planner and Executor's Resource founder, Myra Salzer.

"The word ‘estate' is confusing," she says. "Most people would agree they have stuff. Somehow there's this vision that an estate is an expansive house on 500 acres, or a plantation with servants. Actually an estate is stuff. If you have stuff that you distribute when you die, you have an estate."

Here's a quick question for you in explaining this estate thing. What would you think would be the "stuff," as Salzer puts it, that family and friends argue about the most when someone dies? Money? The house on the lake? The Jaguar? Nope.

"The things that people fight about are small and have sentimental value," Salzer says.

"For example, my girls are in their late 20s and I asked them what would you want of ours? My oldest daughter wanted this hideous plastic mixing bowl we've had forever. You couldn't sell it at a garage sale for a quarter. But my daughter has a picture of herself as an infant taking a bath in it. If another daughter wanted it, there would be a conflict."

Other things comprise an estate, such as kids and even pets. Most people think of their children first and what might happen to them and how they would be cared for in the event of unforeseen death.

And what about the tabby Princess, Rover and the three goldfish? Who takes care of them? Any animal owner would love to see their pets go to a good home. That should be accounted for in the will. Salzer has organized animal trusts to care for horses. Let's not even go there with Leona Helmsley giving her dog Trouble, a white Maltese, $12 million when Helmsley died. That may be over the top in planning a will, but the point is that each part of your life needs to be dealt with after death.

Here's an example in Salzer's practice where the lack of planning caused a problem. Her client unwittingly received a large estate from an uncle she was not on speaking terms with. The uncle died without a will (intestate) and under state law, the niece was the only living relative because her brother died two weeks before her uncle did.

The woman felt a great deal of guilt because there were no other heirs to share the money with. She can't exactly give the money away to her brother's heirs because he had none either.

But let's forget all this talk about money, because we started this conversation with the notion that everyone has an estate. Assets, such as a garden or a house, have to be kept up or they disintegrate. That too must be planed for.

Part of your estate may be very sentimental or of value only to you, that golf club collection or grandma's diaries. One person inherited a set of letters from an aide to General George Washington written during the Revolutionary War. Things with sentimental value – think family photos and movies, even your email, Facebook, Twitter, blog or Flickr accounts – are highly important components of an estate.

"It doesn't matter how many zeros or commas there are," Salzer says. "It matters how the recipient feels about the asset and how it affects them." For more information on how to better organize all of your estate information, visit http://www.executorsresource.com/.