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How to distribute personal possessions?

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Tbull55

Junior Member
What is the name of your state? I live in Florida
My Grandparents are getting older and have expressed to me that they would like to leave certain things to certain people in the family after they pass on. Example: My grandfather wants to leave each grandson a gun out of his collection and my grandmother wants to leave her daughter some jewelery and so on.
They want to put this into writing so there will be no question who gets what with certain items. The rest of the estate is in the will to be sold and split up equally among their children. Can They just draft a letter explaining what goes to who, sign it and have it notarized? Should this be ammended in the will? should they give these items as gifts before they pass so the heirs will not be taxed on the items? I'm not really sure what to tell them. I don't really know much about this sort of thing. Thanks in advance for any advice!

Tbull:cool:
 


xylene

xylene

Senior Member
Tbull55 said:
What is the name of your state? I live in Florida
My Grandparents are getting older and have expressed to me that they would like to leave certain things to certain people in the family after they pass on. Example: My grandfather wants to leave each grandson a gun out of his collection and my grandmother wants to leave her daughter some jewelery and so on.
They want to put this into writing so there will be no question who gets what with certain items. The rest of the estate is in the will to be sold and split up equally among their children. Can They just draft a letter explaining what goes to who, sign it and have it notarized? Should this be ammended in the will? should they give these items as gifts before they pass so the heirs will not be taxed on the items? I'm not really sure what to tell them. I don't really know much about this sort of thing. Thanks in advance for any advice!

Tbull:cool:
Click to expand...
Tell them to see a professional estate planner.

What are the value of the items? Unless each gun or piece of jewelery is extremely valuable, then there will be no gift tax.

Consult IRS publication 950 for a detailed explanation of federal gift taxes.
 
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tranquility

Senior Member
For a single person to do this would be simple and one could use will software. For a couple to do this without distributions at each death would be harder and the easy way would be through trusts. Conditional wills can sometimes be problematical to write. Things like, "all to my spouse unless he/she predeceases me then to" can screw things up. In either route, trust or conditional wills, you should probably be see an attorney.
 
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lwpat

Senior Member
If they want specific items to go to specific people they should go ahead and give them now. Items tend to disappear while the body is not yet cold. Personal experience.
 
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