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Think Children's Literature and Estate Planning lessons do not go hand in hand? Think again.  This phenomenon first hit me in 2014 when I watched Disney's film Cinderella with my then preschool aged children.  As I said then in a blog post , if you are a parent without a will nominating a guardian for your child(ren) and setting up a children's trusts, watch Cinderella and you'll find your motivation. Each new year of parenting has brought changes: diapers are a thing of the past, larger and larger bowls of oatmeal are required for the kids' breakfast, and the books and films they digest grow in complexity.  In the Treasure Hunters Series by Jams Patterson four adolescent siblings navigate the world of espionage and foreign seas in the midst of parents lost at sea.  Pulling his nose from the book my son raised a question -- "mom, what's 'their legal guardian' mean?"  Most recently it was Roald Dahl's Matilda that caused me to anal...

It is not often that I find one book that captures so many of my core interests, but I hit the trifecta with The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter by Margareta Magnusson.  This little book hits on my key interests: one, it relates to my practice of estate planning and probate administration; two, it nourishes my frugal lifestyle; and three, it feeds my obsession with the Nordic way of life.  Billed the next big fad to hit the US, Swedish Death Cleaning means to remove unnecessary things from your home, making the home orderly and nice at the time you depart Mother Earth.  At just over 100 pages, the book is a light-hearted memoir of the author’s later life when she “death cleaned” following the passing of loved ones.  Sprinkled throughout the book are suggestions for motivating yourself to get started and completing the act of taking control of your personal items to declare what is meaningful a...