Have you Written Your Ethical Will?
Have you Written Your Ethical Will?
When you die, your will (or trust or the state's will) will spell out what you want to happen to your investments and personal property. Would you like to share anything more than that with your family?Have you ever considered writing your Ethical Will? It is a gift to those you love whenever they read it. It allows you to share things you believe to be really important with children or grandchildren. An ethical will communicates personal values, beliefs, blessings, and advice to relatives and to future generations. It can be more meaningful to friends and family than any material possession you could bequeath to them.There are considerable advantages to writing an Ethical Will for you, too. It gives you an opportunity to be thoughtful and reflective and possibly provide spiritual meaning for yourself. What you learn can be useful to you in future ventures. In some senses, it can provide immortality. Your legacy will live on if you leave behind people who understand what you stood for and will carry on what you believed in.You do not have to be a professional writer to produce one - just talk from your heart.There is no required format for an ethical will - it is not a legal document. It can be as long or short as you like. In fact, this flexibility is one of its greatest strengths. It does not have to start out as the definitive story of your life - whatever you do has value. Your ethical will can evolve over a period of time.A written (or electronic) document can be so much more effective than a conversation - it has legs. You can say what you want just the way you want to. If properly preserved, it can be around and of value for decades.Here are some questions to help you think about what to include:
- What ideas or information or values or personal history has been important for you?
- What are your stories?
- What do you want to be remembered for, besides your money?
- What are you grateful for?
- If you could do it over again, what would you do differently?
- Is there anything really, really important to share with children or grandchildren, even the ones that are too young to understand now or may not even be alive yet? What do you want them to remember or to do?
- What insights or special wisdom do you have?
- Are there blessings that you have for them? Are there things unsaid that are worth saying now?
If writing an ethical will sounds daunting to you, there are books on this topic, such asEthical Wills by Barry Baines, (Perseus Publishing, 2002) that contain concrete examples written by people from their twenties to eighties. It offers helpful hints for getting started.You can write your ethical will now or later. Of course, it is possible to wait too long. At some point you might no longer be able to write one. That would be a huge loss for you and for your family and friends.Adapted from The University of Minnesota College of Continuing Education: https://cce.umn.edu/news/financial-planning-life-your-last-message-your-familyImage courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net