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So, it turns out that unless you deeply distrust each other, there are only costs and no benefits to multiple executors. In practice, everything needs to be done by all of the executors, and signed by all of them. Pick one. Seriously, don’t let it be more than one person.
We’ve not had any problems. We’ve had minor squabbles over “keep the house and rent it, or sell it asap” and “how urgent is it to clear out the brokerage account at schwab that only has $25 in it, because they paid some interest to it after we tried to close it previously”. But nothing significant. We ended up with “liquidate and split evenly.”
My younger sister is not someone I interact with, and certainly not once my mother has passed.
Unclear why my mother is doing this over my objections. In any event, I can’t be ‘made’ to act as executor, so I’m just leaving it be and when the time comes, I’ll decline to participate. Looks like I have to make a declaration at that time, so not a big deal.
After having been executor for my father’s estate, and de facto executor for my mother’s estate (my father was officially, but money/finance/accounting were things he was mostly useless with)…I’m glad that I’m an only child.
Even though the arrangement was simple (my mother passed first, and everything went to my father; when my father passed, officially everything went to me, although I did honor a change he wanted to make to his will before dementia and the pandemic prevented further adjustments)…it was a headache.
I suspect that having more heirs would increase the headache by a few orders of magnitude.
I think a lot of these issues starts with a will that does not split things evenly, favoring one over the other, the giving of specific items to specific people, etc. From a petty dead person. Plenty of movies have that plot device, too.
Don’t start with that, and everything will work out just fine.
I’m really happy that when my father passed, it was just my brother and I, and neither of us tried to do anything ‘creative.’ We just made a spreadsheet with all of the assets, minus all of the various bills we paid for things after his death, and divided by two. It was a fairly small amount of money, I’m sure craziness goes up exponentially with the size of the estate and the number of people involved.
This is exactly what I am doing, cuz actuary. And, my brother is not.
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I’m guessing every situation is different, but I think another factor is how the kids live relative to their own incomes. I don’t expect a fight with mysister over my parents estate (mid 7 figures) but both of us live well within our means and don’t see much changing as a result.
I could see my ex making the situation completely toxic if she was still around. She felt very entitled.
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I try to use 24-hour time on as many clocks as I can. My family and friends always ask me why I use military time if I was never in the military.
It’s not military time. It’s 24-hour time. There’s a difference.
I know why:
Can’t read the “AM” from “PM” on the clock, because it is too small.
I know I have a few clocks with “A”'s that are block-shaped and have one more leg than the “P” has (old digital ones, so one more diode lit), but the “M” is so close that the extra leg might be part of it.
No. I just think it makes more sense.
How often do you find yourself not knowing whether it is 2:00AM or 2:00PM?
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Not just those times, but every time, ever!
Just the other day I was trying to read my sprinkler time and all of the time settings.
The power went out the other day, and my bedside table clock restarts when the power goes back on, but starting at Midnight (and blinks, so you know it needs correcting). There is a light which goes on when it is AM – or is it PM? The writing is so small it requires a magnifying glass (cuz I can’t remember, and, also, it cannot be set to 24-hour time). This particular clock, from the 80’s or 90’s (still works, so why bother changing it?) also has alarms that are reset to Midnight (or Noon?) when the power goes out.
I have a second clock, battery-powered whose AM/PM indicator is also too small. I use that as a backup alarm (the other clock has radio, which is way nicer to wake up to than a blare, which projects very loudly to wake up everyone).
So, yeah, pretty often, since you asked.
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The misspelling of this thread title:
Maybe it’s a new way of spelling it. It was spelled differently before -
“The village is referred to as “Wimbedounyng” in a charter signed by [King Edgar the Peaceful]in 967.”
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Fixed. 
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1 down on the NYT crossword puzzle for 8/18/23:
Clue is Rubberneck, 4 letters.
First 3 are
GAW
Answer is
GAWP, not GAWk.
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I’ve never heard of that word but Google tells me it’s a thing. TIL
This is giving me wordle flashbacks from a few days ago.
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