I dunno. Having gone through the process of deciding who would inherit what with all my siblings, I have to say it's very hard. And it's ultimately not about what you keep and what you toss, but how you treat each other. I am pleased with what I inherited, I do think that as far as the money is concerned, everyone was treated fairly. But I am still angry about how my husband and I were treated personally--especially my husband.

My grandparents had us put our names on everything. Apparently, my aunt DJ gets the trailer, but she needs my dad to sign off. I have no idea if that's been resolved. So far things have gone pretty well except for my uncle's wife who keeps freaking out over everything. She tried to get some paintings my grandfather's sister did, that were, I suppose, promised to my other uncle. The kicker is that she didn't want them as an heirloom or anything, but for her son's church auction.

My parents have told us they intend to spend everything before they die.

When an in-law of my uncle passed away several years ago, it fell to him and several of his kids to go through the man's house. He defined packrat--actually, he went over the edge into hoarding--so going through the piles of newspapers and other junk to figure out what he had that was worth saving took the five of them an entire weekend. They ended up not only finding enough decent furniture and antiques to fill up my uncle's very large basement, but also found over $10,000 stashed in various corners of the house in small bundles.

I have never been interested in the stuff of grandparents that was worth money, so I had to be very vocal to make sure things I wanted were not tossed. OTOH, I have also found it interesting to watch how people act about going through stuff - jewelry in particular.

Oh, dear lord. I really want to go home migrainey.

When my grandmother died, my mother got distinctly grabby - took the jewelry, had the stones pulled out and put into a single new ring. A really ugly one, to add insult to injury. My sister and I salvaged some of the old settings and are working on getting new stones to put in them.

Ours didn't really have anything of monetary value that wasn't given to the kids years ago. Dad's got Grandaddy's guns. I'm sure all the old quilts went to my eldest aunt, and eldest uncle probably got the family jewelry.

I've got a coin collection of my father's that I have no earthy idea what to do with. His other collections (Reader's Digest record albums and Jim Beam bottles, oy.) didn't amount to much.

Where does one find trustworthy help to evaluate coins? He's been gone for 13 years and I've yet to figure this out.

How did you define it, Raq?

"Uh, pause, it allows me to talk to the engineers using only movie quotes."

My step-mother took care of the whole inheiritance problem by giving me my mother's stuff as Christmas presents. @@

It's just my brother and me (and we both have strongly voiced intent to keep it that way for the actual divvying up, no partners or kids involved) so when, a million years from now, it comes about, I don't expect it to be fraught. But we've seen it modelled really well when our grandparent estates were taken apart, so the idea of drama is kinda foreign. They were very stereotypical midwestern: Oh, you simply must have this. Oh, no, I couldn't. You really should. Maybe M would keep it for a while. Please, take it!

It was kinda funny. The other side was just the two siblings, their partners, the house, and a shitload of wine and threats over who would have to take home the ugly (but worth a lot!) crystal table lamps. I think they sold those.