Grandma’s Wedding Ring

Grandma had the most beautiful wedding ring. Her three grand-daughters fought over who would get grandma’s wedding ring when she passed away.

Unlike financial assets, which can generally be divided easily among your children or grand-children, tangible personal property, like a wedding ring, is unique. Families fight over everything from ownership of a valuable painting, to a grandfather clock, to Dad’s gun collection, to who gets Grandma’s wedding ring. Sometimes the object in question is an item of substantial monetary value, but more often the appeal is sentimental. Families get emotional about items of personal property, like a wedding ring, that represent the person who has passed.

Discussing these issues while you are still alive is better than letting your children or grand-children fight over them later. Some people address this subject before they die, by gifting their possessions, or by asking which items have special meaning to family members, or by leaving directions in their will about how personal property should be divided.

If there are only a few items, you may direct your executor to sell them and divide the proceeds among your heirs. If one person really wants a particular item, like Grandma’s wedding ring, and has the funds, she can buy it from the estate for fair market value. Another approach, if only one child or grand-child wants a certain expensive item, is to reduce that heir’s share from other assets. To steer clear of conflict, you should designate an independent third party to distribute your personal property.

For items of personal property that you want to go to specific people, it is best to say so in your estate planning documents. For instance, in her will, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis directed that most of her personal property go to her children, but she gave a handful of personal items to other people. She left her longtime companion, Maurice Tempelsman, a Greek alabaster head of a woman, and she left her lawyer a copy of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address signed by Robert Frost.

The question is what should you do about sentimental personal property, such as your wedding ring? One possibility is to direct your heirs to divide belongings in substantially equal shares, and if they sell anything, to divide the cash equally. Another option is to direct that each child takes turns picking an item, often based on birth order, so that everyone gets a turn at selecting an item.

No matter what you decide, make sure you make these decisions in your estate plan. By designating who will receive her wedding ring before she died, Grandma made sure that her grand-children would not come to blows and that the wedding ring will peaceably pass to the next generation.