You can't take it with you anyway.

My last surviving grandparent passed away yesterday. She was 80-ish, I don't know the details. May God find a nice place for her soul, wherever she's bound for. I'm not particularly sad. She had a good, long life.

Anyway, what I really want to write about here is the tangent my mind went off after turning to concept of death and mortality over and over in my head after a while. Specifically, I was thinking about wills and inheritances. I can understand the rationale behind such things, I just don't agree with them. Barring some very specific circumstances, I cannot understand why families would bicker over who gets what when the patriarch/matriarch leaves this mortal coil.

Reasons range from a sense of entitlement and what is "proper and appropriate", to wondering who the geezer loved more based on who got more loot, to just just plain greed and avarice. Frankly, I find it all utter bullshit.

I don't like the idea of segmenting whatever wealth I have to any hypothetical progeny I may sire when I finally bite it. I figure that I would have raised them up to be independent and stable, they shouldn't need anything from me after they're all grown up. I don't want the family fracturing over something as trivial as inheritances. Therefore, I plan to blow most of whatever retirement money I may have or give it away to charity when my time finally comes. The kids would get a few sentimental mementos and personal effects. Perhaps a little money, for very specific uses like education and whatnot, but nothing else. "Assets" like the house and other baloney will be sold off, the proceeds donated to whatever cause strikes my fancy before I kick the bucket. The argument "but I want to make sure that my children are taken care of when I die" is highly condescending and insulting. Do you really think they are so worthless that they would not be able to pull through life without your post-mortem assistance? And if they are....well who cares, you're already dead. They are no longer your problem.

Likewise, I have no problems if my parents decide to do the same thing, or give everything to my sisters and me nothing at all. It's their stuff, they get to choose what they want to do with it. I don't need their material wealth to make me happy. Fighting over any sort of inheritance is stupid, and the blame for any negative effects should be equally shared between the deceased and the squabbling siblings and God knows what other parties decide to lay claim to the booty.