family heirlooms

Inheritance Costs
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Inheritance Costs

Wow, I have written and rewritten the intro to this post five separate times and I cannot get the words to come out right! Partly, it’s because too many people reading this have lost someone dear, and I worry a topic that touches on losing loved ones might be triggering. If that sounds like you, please be gentle to yourself and feel free to check back in another day.

Partly, it’s because the topic of “inheritance” is so emotionally loaded. Right up front, you have a loss. So there are going to be all sorts of complicated feelings about an inheritance based on your relationship to the deceased. Maybe especially when that inheritance is not oodles of cash, but a baby grand piano, or a speedboat, or a timeshare in Argentina, or a collection of Meissen clowns, or a living, breathing lives-up-to-150-years tortoise.

(Perhaps the more logical minded among us have less of an issue with this than I do, but I am SO SENTIMENTAL. I cannot even THINK about inheriting anything without getting all teary and upset. I am pretty much banned from talking to my mother-in-law about things she wants to give away, because I will 100% take them, if only because they belonged to Great Aunt Hoosit. No thought to whether we need a six-feet-tall marble phonograph or a set of John Travolta-themed dishware. I get all wrapped up in the story behind the thing and can no longer see the thing itself.)

Once you get past the whole “someone I love has died” aspect of inheritance, you have the equally complicated issue of trying to fit someone else’s [heirloom] into your life. A life which may not have room for said [heirloom] for a wide range of reasons.

Finally, there’s the additional complexity of trying to navigate the inheritance of something precious to YOU when it may not be quite so precious to the person you share a life with. (I am not even going to get into the wildly complicated aspects of sharing an inheritance with a sibling, parent, step-sibling/parent, or other relative. That’s a different topic entirely.)

“What to do when your spouse inherits something you don’t care about” is what I most want to discuss today, although I 100% want to hear of any weird or unusual or particularly precious heirlooms in your own family lore.

Edited to add: Whoops! I forgot to mention that the below scenario is 100% FAKE. The watch is a stand-in for any heirloom. As you read, see if your calculus would change if [watch] were replaced by [sailboat], [lake house], [parrot], [pipe organ], or any other heirloom that would definitely incur costs. Would your response change if it were YOUR [heirloom] and not your spouse’s?

SCENARIO

Upon his death, a beloved grandfather bequeaths a very valuable antique watch to your spouse. The watch has both sentimental value (your spouse recalls seeing it on Grandfather’s wrist for the duration of his life; your spouse has fond memories of trying on the watch; your spouse can recite word for word the story of how Grandfather came to own this high-end timepiece) and financial value (the watch is nearly 60 years old and in perfect shape; it has an insurance value of $20,000).

When your spouse first takes possession of this watch, there are some initial costs. The watch requires insurance, which costs about $300 a year. To keep the watch safe from pets and children, your spouse purchases a watch box for about $100.

Your spouse wears the watch as often as possible. After all, the grandfather enjoyed the watch; so should your spouse.

Then you learn that the watch will require some routine maintenance. Maybe it needs a professional cleaning for around $50. Maybe it needs an annual water-resistance inspection for $50.

Okay, the annual costs are adding up a bit. But it’s not a ton of money. And surely there are costs that you incur that you don’t even think about.

Plus, the watch clearly brings your spouse joy. The grandfather’s memory proudly circles your spouse’s wrist. The feeling of closeness your spouse feels to the grandfather – well, that’s priceless.

Except… Now the watch needs a mainspring replacement for $150, which isn’t nothing, but… okay, fine. And then the winding mechanism fails and requires a $400 repair. And then one of the links becomes damaged, and now the watch repair people are quoting you $500 to repair the bracelet.

Suddenly, your spouse’s precious heirloom is costing some real money.

ASSUMPTIONS

Let’s assume, before you decide how you will respond, that:

  • you and your spouse share a primary bank account, but also have separate “personal expenses” accounts
  • you have ample money in your shared account to cover these costs with no problem, but the costs are more than your spouse’s “personal expenses” account could pay for without significant hardship (i.e., your spouse would not be able to buy you a birthday gift, or afford a NYT Games subscription, or whatever would constitute a “significant hardship” in this lack-of-actual-hardship situation)
  • you are not a “watch person” and do not care about watches beyond their ability to tell time
  • you love your spouse
  • you loved your spouse’s grandfather, even though you weren’t as close to him as your spouse was

YOUR RESPONSE

So what do you DO? I think we need another poll.

I’m pretty sure that most of the people in this little blogging community are Of The Age to have either dealt with this subject already, or who will likely be dealing with it in the not-too-distant future. Maybe it will cost us money or maybe it will cost us sleep. Maybe we will love the inheritance as much as our spouse does or maybe there will be a vast imbalance. Maybe – and this is my sincere, heartfelt, and impossible wish – we will all live forever with those we hold most dear.

I don’t know if we can necessarily predict our reaction to any sort of bequest until it happens. But I would love your thoughts anyway.

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The Three Pianos

Whoops. My last post made it sound like moving is imminent, but the Big Day is still a few weeks out. Womp, womp. Of course, while it may seem like the moving process is dragging out indefinitely (which it is, in many ways), it feels extremely urgent and present in my life. 

For one thing, the packing seems like it will never be done in time! My husband and I spent all last weekend packing, and we cleared out a) the guest room and b) The Piece. THAT’S IT. I have been packing and packing and packing for weeks now. We have made three separate special trips to the dump to divest ourselves of trash (SO FAR). I have been to Goodwill a half dozen times. And yet, outside of a pervasive and mildly disturbing smell of cardboard, our home remains virtually unaffected. 

I am pretty sure all we need to do is remove the art from the walls and we’re good to go? Although there are a few things left in the closet.
The Piece looks so sad, divested of its treasures.
The Piece held the contents of ALL FOUR of these boxes. Plus a bunch of vases and candles that we threw away/donated. It sure holds a TON of crap I mean precious treasures!!!!

How do we have so much STUFF? 

In addition to packing, I am really struggling with all the logistics. There are so many things to schedule, from home repairs in our current house to moderate renovations in the new house. Plus, it’s the end of summer, so there are all sorts of School Is Starting Soon appointments and commitments and meetings. And Carla is done with camp but not yet in school all day. It also happens to be one of the busiest times of year for me workwise, so I have projects and meetings and deadlines. 

I like to think I am fairly well-organized, but this is stretching the limits of this particular skill set. Because I am just one person, and I can unfortunately only be in one place at a time. It seems like most of my non-packing, non-working time lately is spent with my calendar open on both my computer and my phone, trying to figure out where to squeeze in the next thing I have to do.

Here is a perfect example of the kind of logistical knot I keep finding myself in: The Three Pianos.

  • Piano #1: My husband and I possess a baby grand piano, which was a very generous hand-me-down from his parents. This is the same piano that lived in my husband’s house when he was growing up. I play the piano, so does my husband, and Carla (who has not yet taken piano lessons) likes to pick out songs on the keys. I grew up in a house with a piano and I am going to keep this piano for as long as I possibly can, even if I have to someday convert it into a bed so that it can fit into the confines of my room in the assisted living facility. So obviously this piano is coming with us to the new house. My husband and I have designated a room in our new house as The Piano Room. (It is supposed to be a formal dining room, but considering we have only ever used our current dining room for doing puzzles, we prefer dedicating a room to the piano and some cozy chairs and hosting all meals in our kitchen.) 
  • Piano #2: The sellers of our new house had a lovely upright piano. My father plays the piano and when he and my mom moved to our region, they were looking for a piano for their new house… so we arranged to buy the one from the sellers on behalf of my parents.
  • Piano #3: My husband and I are also in possession of an electric piano. It is a full size piano that has a really nice, rich sound and has keys with a realistic feel to them. (But it also has other instrument settings, so you can change it to sound like a harpsichord.)You can hook headphones into it while you play and supposedly it connects via Midi to a computer, so it has a lot of useful technology. (My husband suggested at one point that we put it in Carla’s new room, so she could play it at her leisure… which sounds awesome, honestly. However, my husband also has a full size keyboard that he uses for producing music, so it’s not like my child won’t have a technology-compatible piano should she require it, yes I realize she is VERY spoiled.) (We have too many instruments in our house, but on the plus side, our house is full of music!) For the past few years, the electric piano has been sitting unused in our basement. We are donating this piano to a local school. 

So here we have three pianos. None of the pianos currently lives in the place where it needs to end up. Part of my job is to get each piano to its new home. (Let’s say for the sake or argument and also true-to-lifeness that my husband is not available to help with any of this because he is at work.)

  • Piano #1 cannot go to the new house until the floors have been redone. We cannot move it ourselves and have to hire piano movers.
  • Piano #2 needs to go to my parents’ house, and it needs to be out of the new house before the flooring people arrive to redo the floors. But we cannot get it out of the new house until the sellers move out, which they have not done yet. (They negotiated extra time as part of our contract.) We cannot move this piano ourselves and have to hire piano movers. I have to be at the new house to give the movers access to the piano and then I have to be at my parents’ house to accept the piano. The new house is 25 minutes away from my current house; my parents’ house is 30 minutes away from the new house. One piano mover chargers more to pick up/deliver the pianos separately; one piano mover charges a flat per-piano fee so at least that makes it easy to choose but I had to make lots of calls to figure this all out.
  • Piano #3 needs to go to the local school. We can move this piano ourselves, because I can fit it in my vehicle. My husband will help me load the piano into my vehicle the night before I need to deliver it, but I cannot fit both the piano and my daughter in the vehicle at the same time. The person who can accept the piano is only available Tuesday through Thursday, but on each of those days I have to drive my daughter to an appointment.
Two of the three pianos. Looks like we’re about to host a dueling pianos event.

It’s like one of those logic puzzles with the complex grids you have to fill out until each option only has one right answer. I used to LOVE doing those logic puzzles when I was a kid. NOT SO MUCH ANYMORE.

This particular piano logic problem seems to be semi-resolved, at least. But where I cross off one logic problem, another pops up in its place! We’ve got windows repairs and roof repairs and school drop-off and cleaning people and final walkthroughs and another call week and haircuts and orthodontist appointments and PTA meetings and our very last block party and and and.

These are certainly not problems problems. Everything is fine, everything is good. And there will be a time after this. But right now, it is occupying ALL of my brain space.

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The Piece

My husband and I were so fortunate that when we moved into our house, his parents were also in the process of moving. This meant that we “inherited” a bunch of their beautiful, no-way-could-we-afford-this furniture. 

Of the items they gave us, my favorites are the baby grand piano, the mid-century modern sideboard, and the tall, ornate curio cabinet that my mother-in-law refers to as The Piece. 

When NGS wrote about her grandmother-in-law’s curio cabinet, I knew I wanted to write about The Piece.

First of all, I don’t know exactly WHAT category of furniture The Piece falls into. I think it’s maybe a sideboard with hutch, but it also has elements of curio cabinet to it? I am pretty sure it’s not a credenza, but I don’t know that I’ve ever used the word credenza before so I wanted to. 

Secondly, The Piece has been in my mother-in-law’s family for generations. She said it used to live in her grandmother’s home. There is some confusion as to its provenance, though. Perhaps Mexico? Maybe Spain? 

I love it because it’s so unusual looking. Plus, it holds a TON of stuff. Currently, I’m using it to store most of my vases, some porcelain figurines that I inherited from my husband’s grandmother, some crystal that I inherited from my grandmother, and some other various odds and ends.

When my mother- and father-in-law delivered The Piece to us, they were very apologetic because the shelves were missing. “We know it had shelves at one point,” they said. “But they must have been lost during the move.” 

It was charmingly amusing to find the shelves while I was cleaning The Piece. They were simply on the bottom of the opaque-doored area, stacked in such a way that they appeared to be part of the cabinet’s floor.

Because none of us are immune from missing highly obvious things: There is an electric component, which I did not know about until we’d owned The Piece for five or six years. There’s a light in the top portion and you can turn it on and off to showcase your crystal and vases and porcelain birds. 

I love that The Piece is ours, now. Maybe someday Carla will want it in her home, or, if it’s not her style, maybe my niece will cherish it. Having something that’s been in the family for so long feels so precious to me, for reasons I can’t fully articulate.

Do you have any unique or hand-me-down pieces of furniture? Any family “heirlooms” that have been passed around?