Another Alabaman, here (waves to allison, newdawn, et al.) I grew up an Air Force brat, so have lived all over (Ohio, Colorado, New Mexico, DC area, Florida panhandle) and went to college in Missouri. I got a job in Birmingham, Alabama after college and have stayed in the general area since then. I describe it as a baby-bear sort of place. Not too hot or too cold, too soft or too hard, etc. I've lived suburban apartments, city historic neighborhoods, and now semi-rurally, just outside a small university town/bedroom community for Birmingham. I have to agree with what has been posted by the other Alabamans. The summers are hit and humid, but the winters (the last 60 days notwithstanding) are fairly mild. The scenery is lovely -- green trees, rolling hills, lakes within an hour's drive of most anywhere, and beaches or mountains within 3-5 hours' drive. And Atlanta is a few hours away if a big-city fix is needed. I do miss having a "community" in our current area. In the historic neihborhoods there were always like-minded folks (preservation!) who liked to gather and have fun. Out here, folks sort of keep to themselves. But we came out here for the privacy (and the great house) so I really shouldn't complain. Pros: cost of living (extremely low property taxes), scenery, community music (playing music is important to us, and the community music scene here is thriving - we play in three different community bands, a dance/swing band, and I'm in a brass quintet) Cons: unending strife between urban/suburban power structures that will keep the Birmingham area from progressing as it should and could; lack of professional job opportunities (consolidations and closures over the last decade have taken a toll); focus on the church as the center of most social ineraction. We talk of moving to the eastern mountains, or to a lakefront property somewhere. We will consider AL, NC, SC, GA, TN . . . but if we never leave Alabama (which we probably won't) that will be fine with me. I can't really picture us getting the same house on the same wooded three acres with the same cost of living anywhere else.

>>The big problem with living trusts is that to get any real benefit (other than the perceived benefit of avoiding probate), the person making the trust has to give up all control over his or her estate.This may be true in New England but it is certainly not true in CA. We have a Revocable Living Trust as does my widowed MIL, and have full control of the assets in both cases. In an IRREVOCABLE Living Trust, such as an ILIT (Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust), you do indeed lose control of the assets. Also underrepresented in the current craze to sell the middle-class on getting RTs is the fact that unless the trust originators spell out some non-standard instructions, most lawyers use a standard software to produce an RT. This can in fact create problems - for example, my MIL is allowed to draw down the principal of her deceased husband's share of the estate for health, education, and maintenance. This is EXTREMELY unusual, yet most middle class people would assume they could do this. Not so, unless your trust is set up this way. As for probate not being a problem, I beg to differ. I settled my sister's estate - a simple one with no real estate, just a car and some art assets. It took a full 18 months to get through probate and three different lawyers (the first two were incompetent and lazy; the third was a gem and wrapped it up in less than 2 months). Probate in CA costs a percentage fee to both the lawyer and the executor, plus expenses. On average it's about 1.5% (a big change from the 6% it used to be!). So on a $1M estate that's $15K to the lawyer and $15K to the executor, plus expenses. OTOH, a trust passes without probate, and trustees don't get paid unless specified in the trust, or unless you have specified a professional trustee. If you name a spouse, family member, or friend, they DO NOT GET PAID. They can get reimbursed for expenses but that is all, unless the trust originators have specified they can be paid on an hourly basis, at the current professional rate (about $65-70 hr here in the SF Bay Area). The fee of $2500 to set up the trust (don't forget, we are in one of the most expensive-to-live areas of the country, so our costs are always higher than most places) included pour-over wills, durable healthcare Power of Attorney with HIPAA releases, Power of Attorney docs, and the title transfer of our property into the trust, for both of us. Our MIL got the same pkg, which is important in her case because the original RT she and her husband set up was 25 yrs out of date. It was critical for us to arrange a way to change the successor trustee and contingent beneficiary lists to reflect the many changes that had happened in the last quarter century. The lawyer spent hours with us and my MIL, over a series of three meetings, making sure my MIL understood all the changes we were making and why. This lawyer was a bargain at any price and did an outstanding job for this small flat fee.

My DH has a small insurance policy through his employer, which I am named as primary benificiary, with his 3 kids named as contingent benificiaries. He has no other policy. There is no policy with them listed as primary benificiaries. And remember, his pension has already divided in half with his ex at the divorce. I am listed as primary benificiary on his IRA account (and he is listed the same way on mine). His pension is no where near enough to retire on, mine either. I feel if he died, I would need his pension; and if I died he would need my pension. My home was 95% paid the day we married. The assessed value (which was done in 2008) is $195,000. That is what a home of comparible worth in our area would sell for today. He has not and is not investing in the house since our marriage. Do you mean paying monthly bills like utilities, or what do you mean? The house is already paid for. Neither one of us is investing in it. The investment was already made before I married him. Do you mean the yearly taxes? Or what do you mean? If it's fair for me to pay 100% of the taxes, because I own the house, then it's fair for me to charge him rent. This gets ridiculous. If he didn't move in with someone who owned a house, then he would be paying several hundren monthly for either rent or a mortgage. So I don't think that because he helps pay the yearly taxes that that entitles his kids to inherit a portion. I think sharing the maintainance costs of the house, the taxes, and the insurance is fair. This does not change the fact that I am still owner. He gets the benifit of living there without making mortgage payments. Alot of my coworkers are paying $2000 monthly in mortgage payments, he doesn't have to do this because of me. As far as the airplane goes, it's value is about $40,000. I feel that if he died, that it goes to me. Like I said in my last post, our joint money pays the $3000 yearly needed to maintain the plane. His kids won't even come and help him wash it. Why should they inherit it? It would be different if suddenly we both were killed together in a car accident. And suddenly there were assets to liquidate. Then by all means, sell it and divide the money with his 3 kids. But if he dies, I may need the money from the sale of the plane to live on. The airplane really doesn't depreciate like a car does, they hold their value much better. As far as the college payments to his kids. Well, that all didn't happen prior to our marriage. The only part that happened prior to our marriage was his agreement with them to pay their college. He had loans out on them when we married, and those loans were brought into the marriage. So, the way I see it, some of the money that we both together today are bringing into the marriage, is paying off the remainder of his kids college loans. The loan for SD24 hasn't been started to be repaid, she is still in college. He won't start repaying for another year or two. I was not at all suggesting that my kids get something worth $120,000 to even the score. If he took his kids to Disney Land when they were 8 years old, then does that mean that my kids are owed a Disney Land trip too? Of course not. I just look at it like he chose to give his kids a start in life, and this is the way he/they chose. I don't think that I shouldn't be able to give my kids a start in life too. I was thinking something more along the lines of helping with a downpayment on a first home, or something like that, maybe like an amount of $10,000 or something like that. I don't have that much cash to give any of my kids, and would need to take out a second mortgage to do it. But I don't see this as different than taking out a loan for college. 15 years from now I'm afraid that our 6 children will look back on things and feel that 3 kids got a start in life from their parent, and 3 didn't. I don't think that because they don't want to attend college, that it is fair to pass judgment on them and say because they chose to not do what I wanted them to do, that they get no help. Mind you, my kids are not asking for help, and when I've offered, they say they don't need it. They don't feel entitled to cash from me or anyone else. When DH and I talk about what would be fair to designate in a will, he says that neither will die untill we are elderly (that runs in our families). And that after 25 years of marriage together, that it will seem more like a blended family, it will seem like "our house", and our money. Then anything left in the estate when we both pass would be divided 6 equal shares between all children. In other words, his kids would get an equal share in all of our assets (including my house). I told him that I don't think this is fair to my kids, and he disagrees. Since we haven't agreed on anything, we haven't written a will. I know that I can just go to an attorney by myself and write up whatever I want, but what would that do to the trust and communication that we are building in our marriage? I feel that whatever we do, we have to agree, and go in together to do wills. I just feel like, he basically started over from scratch when he divorced. And because he divorced that he was screwed financially, and his kids also. Had he not divorced, his kids would have inherited his house. It is unfortunate that it happened this way, buy why do I have to share my kid's inheritance with his kids, to compensate for what he and his kids lost at his divorce?

I'm going to take a different tack. After nearly a decade as a wellness nurse in an independent living retirement community, I see this as a safety issue. Throw rugs aside (well known fall risk), you should be able to theoretically walk around with a yard stick across your waist and not touch any furnishings. If you can't maintain this three foot clearance, then it's too cluttered and unsafe. Clear passages with no trip/fall hazards is a crucial part of home safety as an older person attempts to age in place. One fall can change the trajectory of a life in an instant. There are many good home safety checklists available online with helpful tips and pertinent information (cdc.gov and ncoa.org-the national council on aging are just two). Beyond the safety issue, as a daughter who spent four months clearing out my parents' home (three story home and two story garage) after the death of my mother in 2013 (my father had died ten years earlier), please purge papers and at least some extraneous belongings now. My sister and I had a paper trail going back to the 1930s to review/trash/shred. Our parents dearly loved us and yet we were driven to tears at times that so much stuff had been saved over the decades (and never looked at in the garage attic or house attic again) that we had to physically haul out and either attempt to sell (nearly always unsuccessful), take to Goodwill or the county dump. That experience absolutely changed both of us and we resolved to never put our own children in this position-we've taken steps to purge our own papers and belongings and are much more hesitant when buying more "things."