Writing a will: What to leave behind after you die

New videos DAILY: https://bigth.ink

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive video lessons from top thinkers and doers: https://bigth.ink/Edge

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A will is not a simple, one-piece-of-paper kind of document. There are many different kinds of wills: There's a will to handle your things. There's a will to handle your body. And there are wills to handle your legacy.

If you don't prepare a will, and if you don't set up a trust, and if you don't arrange your advance directives, then you, and your loved ones, fall into these default legal mechanisms that aren't necessarily always commonsensical.

In ethical wills, which are gaining popularity today, deceased individuals pass along tips of wisdom or things they've learned to those who survive them — this is an opportunity for them to pass along the narrative of how they say life, what they thought of themselves and others, and what they hope for their loved ones.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BJ MILLER

BJ Miller, MD, is an assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco where he practices and teaches palliative medicine. He has been profiled in The New York Times Magazine, and interviewed on Super Soul Sunday, The Tim Ferriss Show, and On Being with Krista Tippett, and has spoken at the Aspen Ideas Festival and around the world.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

BJ MILLER: As these things go, there are layers of issues. So a will is not sort of a simple, one piece of paper kind of document. There are many different kinds of wills. There's wills to handle your things. There's wills to handle your body. And there are wills to handle your legacy, in a way. We have layered in systems and structures and legalities and all sorts of paperwork to this subject. So, if we have some old-fashioned notion that death is natural, it'll come, society absorbs death all the time, family members absorb death all the time, that we can just kind of let nature take its course, well, again, we've supervened in nature in too many ways by now.

So if you don't prepare, if you don't do your will, if you don't set up a trust, if you don't do your advance directives, et cetera, then you fall into these default mechanisms in our systems that aren't necessarily always commonsensical. So one thing that happens all the time -- and it happens at every level of society -- I mean, most recently, Prince famously died and had not done his will. And it's left an enormous mess for his family and his estate. And they'll be fighting in that family for I don't know how long, for a long time. And so much of that could have been obviated by doing a will, putting it in a trust. It's not fun. But it's also not that difficult. You just have to take time to do it.

So this is sort of one of the ways that death goes from difficult to feeling impossible, or difficult to feeling almost cruel. The pain that we layer on top of our grief can be profound. And it's often for the lack of these very simple things, like you just didn't do your paperwork. Or a common scenario is someone takes the time to put their estate into a trust-- if you put into a trust, your family gets to avoid probate, which is a hellish legal process that goes on for years, generally speaking. But they'll set up a trust but they'll forget to put their assets into the trust. Or they'll forget to sign a piece of paper.

Or they'll do their will, and then not tell anyone where it is. These kinds of things are really common. And you can imagine, it's a simple mistake. I mean, there's an advance care directive, which is often also called a living will. And that's where you stipulate your wishes for how do you want to be treated if -- when you're who do you want to be your health care proxy, making decisions for you if you can't? That is probably the single most important thing any of us can do, is to name our health care proxy. And that's a relatively easy process.

So you've got the living will slash advance directive -- naming your proxy, naming your durable power of attorney for finances. And then you can get into things like who gets what after you're gone, et cetera. So there's that bundle of paperwork that also will often cover what's called code status. So if you die, when you die, do you want medical effort to try to revive you, resuscitate you? Or do you want to let people make you comfortable and let you go? You can make those kinds of stipulations in your will and your advance directive.

On top of that, if you have assets, if you have anything that you want heirs to inherit beyond personal items, you'll really...

For the full transcript, check out https://bigthink.com/videos/bj-miller-will