The Disposition of Remains Document

WARNING, THIS POST CONTAINS VIDEO FOOTAGE OF AN EMBALMED HUMAN!

Probably not a common warning for most blog posts, but I stumbled across an interesting article that inspired me to talk briefly about one of the many tools in my belt as an estate planner: the Disposition of Remains.

This stand-alone document lives with your will, and specifies just what you want done with your body upon your death. While many of my clients default to pretty generic provisions -- cremation and then scattered by their family; burial on a family plot -- some of my clients are very directed in their dispositions: specifying what type of a funeral or wake the would want, paying for family members to travel to have their ashes scattered, and even naming a particular party planner to arrange a celebration of their life.

As creative as I've seen some of my clients' dispositions get, none of them have gone to this extreme:

You can read the full article here.

Of course, you'll want to consult with your favorite estate planning attorney to discuss just what cool things you can do with you body once you've shuffled off this mortal coil.

And please, always wear a helmet when you're riding your motorcycle. ;)

Where There's a MJ Will, There's a Way!

So, it looks as if Michael Jackson's will has been presented! It will be interesting to find out how good MJ was at keeping his affairs in order. I am left to ponder just when he last updated his estate plan.

According to the article, his mother had already petitioned to administer his estate. Here in Washington, his selection of an executor in his last will and testament would supercede his mother's petition as administrator. (An administrator is the title given to someone who is dealing with an intestate estate, or an estate where there was no will, while an executor is the title given when there was a will.) It will be interesting to see how this shakes out in the end.

So, for you occasional followers, I am not obsessed with Michael Jackson, simply a child of the 80s and therefore a student of his celebrity. I am certainly saddened by his loss, though you will not find me wailing on Hollywood Boulevard over his star. It has, nonetheless, given me some good fodder on here, so I will do my best to follow this and give you my estate attorney mpressions of what's going on!

Greetings from Downtown Seattle!

It is a nice, partly-sunny late-fall Seattle morning, and the weekend is looking pretty decent. I'm hoping that if the winds stay calm and the skies relatively dry, I can get one last weekend on the water in my 17' 1976 Bayliner Mutiny. My sister and I bought it off of my grandmother late this summer after my step-grandfather passed away in June. We've been thrilled to keep one of his prized possessions in the family, and I only hope that we are as good caretakers as he was of this 70s-bowling-alley-blue beauty.

As an estate planning and probate attorney, I've probably spent as much time on family probate matters as I have on anyone else's. I reckon that some would find this morbid or depressing. It is certainly emotional, surveying the life of someone I know well, and whose own life played a role in molding my own. That said, I am thrilled to be able to help my family, and the families of my clients, at this most profound of all moments.

Through this, I've been struck by the loose ends that are left untied, the bad feelings unaddressed, and all the little "i"s undotted and "t"s uncrossed. That's probably why I feel compelled to blog here: I want YOU to know the whys and hows of estate planning.

Yes, I get paid to draft estate plans, so in the interest of full-disclosure, I have a vested interest in you wanting to get your affairs in order. But that's not my goal here. Rather, I want to talk to you about the experiences I see my clients facing every day (in general terms of course - attorney-client privilege is extremely important to me!), the tough decisions they have to make, and the intended and unintended results of those decisions.

I supppose I should take a moment to define estate planning for those that don't know what it is. It's pretty straightforward if you break it down by its elements: Your "estate" is a broad description of all the property you own: furniture, collectibles, vehicles (and vessels!), real estate, bank accounts, stocks and bonds, and even intangible and inchoate (yet-to-be-formed) rights and interests that have real value. The "planning" portion is deciding how you want to manage that property while you are alive, and where and how it passes to your heirs and/or other beneficiaries when you die. This may also be referred to as asset protection, generational planning, etc.

The most simple of my estate plans consist of a will and disposition of remains, powers of attorney for health care and financial decisions, and a health care directive, which is also known as a "living will" or "directive to physicians". More complex estate plans include living (a.k.a. inter-vivos) trusts (a trust created during your life), testamentary trusts (a trust created upon your death), pre-nuptial or domestic partnership agreements, and community property agreements. The most complex estate plans will include many or all of these aforementioned planning vehicles, as well as tax-planning trusts (of both the inter-vivos and testamentary nature), and family companies. Of course, you can see a list of the kind of work I typically do on estate plans on my firm's web site at www.spenceranderson.com/estate-planning.htm.

Sorry, I know that's a lot of information, but it is a good basis to help you understand just what it is that I do, and what it is that I am going to talk about here. Yes, of course, I will try to pepper this with some other fun tidbits of information, and I suspect that you will see me venture outside of the estate planning arena just a little when I talk about emerging property rights issues, family law, and small business matters, all of which tie back to my main practice area of estate planning and probate.

So there it is, my introduction. I hope you find this blog occasionally helpful and more occasionally interesting. I invite you to email with questions, thoughts, feedback, etc. Respectful disagreement is absolutely fine, just be nice!

Thanks for reading, and I'll post more soon.