The Boomer Burden: Dealing with Your Parents' Lifetime Accumulation of Stuff

One stop shopping if you are in need of resources and ideas about dealing with a loved one's estate. Pleased to be able to say I met this very knowledgeable lady through her visit to my blog and vice versa. Miss Hall has an envious profession as an estate appraiser and consultant. This binder-like volume gives resources and trusted advice from her own personal experiences in dealing with clients who are overwhelmed with their beloved parents' stuff. It is becoming a known fact that our parents' stuff MAY be beloved and treasured by US, but OUR kids just aren't too hip to the nostalgic sentiments we have learned to attach to our forebears' belongings and heirlooms. The IKEA generation of young people live light, move more, and like less to encumber them in their living spaces. Who can really blame them? WE came from an era of solid "stay-put" folks who likely stayed in the only home they ever bought. With the advanced fluidity of life in general, people are less and less likely to stay put more than a decade or two at most. So how to parse the stuff? How to manage the guilt and stress of disposing a lifetime or even a couple of generations' worth of stuff? THIS book will guide you and be your true friend when you must go to dealers, post items for sale, or enter auctions for fair and up-to-date market pricing or demand info. KUDOS, Julie Hall, for a truly needed handbook for a very complex responsibility. I also strongly urge you to check out her blog at estatelady.wordpress.com .

I'm a 60 year old Paralegal. I have been a Certified Paralegal since 1988. Often times I need to refresh what I learned in school. This book, among other legal books I purchased on Amazon, were great for re-learning or refreshing my memory. I learn a lot of new things. Please purchase a legal book pertaining to your STATE. I live in Texas, so these TEXAS legal books were helpful. The ones on Estate Planning and Texas Probate are great for a family to have on their home book shelves. You can refer to them when have your Will prepared, or if anyone in your family passes and asks you to be the Executor of the Estate. Everyone should know about PROBATE, it means "To Prove Up" the Estate (or Will) and it's Assets, and in a court of law. Whether you have a Will, a Trust or No Will or Trust, an Estate must be probated in some way. You can "google" Texas Probate or for any state that you live in, and read up on it. Everyone who passes away, their Estate must be probated. Even individuals who have a Revocable Family Trust, which is often created to "avoid" probate, often has to go through probate anyway because they did not keep their Trust current. An attorney can explain. Yes, you will like this book. Jennifer in Houston, Texas.

I didn't discover this book until after I had sold my mother's house. I thought it might help me with all the things I have of my mom's that are now stored at my house. It did help me with the photos, but what about all the yearbooks, albums, and other keepsakes? Much of it is personalized items that I couldn't throw away, awards and such.Also, the author's idea of separating items to be donated from items to sell before the estate sale is not how my estate sales people went about it. They had everything up for sale, from high end items, such as artwork and antique furniture, to clothing and even food (as long as it wasn't expired). After the estate sale was over they donated what didn't sell.While I do wish I had read this book before the estate sale, it may not have helped much. I was the sole heir, so I didn't need all the parts about siblings. Most of my mother's papers were in order, except for the will, for which I contacted the family attorney, and, being the sole heir, it didn't create much of an issue.

Book could use an update. Constantly referring to Boomers got old really quick. But the Boomers aren’t necessarily the caregivers now, they are the elderly parents. Book was written in 2007, and the world is totally different now. A lot of words and little substance. About 1/2 way through I tired of reading another story of a family done wrong. Would pass moving forward unless it’s updated.

Book gets 2 stars because it does give some very good and accurate information about the whole process. But it is redundant about those points. And leaves out or minimizes some Really Important points. For instance- get your parents (as well as yourself!) to write their wishes while they are alive is emphasized over and over and over). While the importance and functionality of a revocable trust is mentioned only briefly. If the estate is over a certain amount of $ (I forget the exact figure- I think it's 100k, which is most people with a home), this is the document you need along with the will. It will save you tons of time, energy, and frustration, as well huge attorney fees, and taxes. Look into it. I can't emphasize enough how much grief I was able to avoid because of that document. The many scenarios mentioned in her book were a reminder of how fortunate we were that my parents did that. The book doesn't adequately address the thing that makes it Really Hard to get rid of the stuff- which is the emotional aspect of Throwing something out that was precious to your mother or father. Stuff that really isn't valuable to anyone else, it'd be ok to Give it to someone who would value it....but how can you throw away your dad's high school scrapbook? Pictures of ancestors, grandpa's diploma, similar things? I don't know and I haven't yet found someone to tell me. She tells us how to physically clear the house out in a week. But really, most of us can figure that part out. Many of us can even do that. (Auto pilot, I guess) But there are others of us who don't even Want to do that. We just aren't wired that way.....and we find it next to impossible. I was hoping the book would better address that sort of issue.On the positive side, the author seems to be a woman of integrity, and I would love to have someone like her if I was to hire an "estate lady", as she calls it.

Very interesting

Very detailed & very useful. I sent copies to my parents and sibling. It deals with the emotional issues as well as the practical & legal. It was the best of the books I read dealing with the topic.