Over the last several years, there has been a movement in technology called the “Internet of Things.” This is the growing interconnection, via the internet, of computing devices embedded in everyday objects. At some point in the future, all our home and business technology are expected to be seamless and interconnected.  

In the past, estate planning has been solely or almost completely concerned about passing a person’s assets at death. It has not been connected to other parts of life and especially not connected to the parts of all our lives that have no monetary value: family history, legacy, values, etc. If the IRS does not value it, we often ignore it in estate planning.  

We need to start thinking about Interconnected Estate Planning to make estate planning more wholistically connected with our lives. Especially in this age of downsizing and decluttering, we need to start thinking about how we plan to transfer our things to our children, families, and friends in a way that transfers not just the title and ownership, but also transfers the “Why” so those people and others will understand the importance and the stories behind those assets. We also can think about making those transfers during life when we have the chance to assure the best stewardship of the items for the future.  

How do we start Interconnected Estate Planning? Many of us are paralyzed or overwhelmed and do not start estate planning until late in life, or – at worst – when it is too late. Among the negative thoughts I have heard are: 

•  “I’ll just leave this to be handled after I am gone.” 
• “My children/grandchildren/friends/family all know what I want and they will divide everything fairly.” 
• “I do not want to make any decisions that might make people mad after I am gone.” 
• “I don’t want to dwell on my own death.” 

In my experience, it is much better to make a plan than to leave the disposition of your estate to chance. Many estate planning attorneys, accountants, insurance professionals, and others who help to manage assets for estates have stories of families broken apart because the person who died was not clear about disposition. There are lawsuits that have dragged on literally for decades where beneficiaries argue about these assets… and not always the most expensive items. 

Fortunately, there is a solution. Creating an interconnected plan can start with considering just a few items, and without even going to an attorney. By considering these items, you have the chance to answer the most important question your beneficiaries will have after you are gone: Why? Why are these items important? Why did she save that? Why does it matter? 

In one of the episodes of Evening with Artifcts, Jeff Greenwald said, “When you are giving an object away, it motivates you to tell the story. Stories don’t take up much space at all.” So, start with a small list of items you value. Title the list “Personal Property Memorandum” and state at the start that you intend this to be included in your current or any future Will, and date it. Make the list and consider why you think those items are worth giving away, what they mean to you, name the beneficiary, and describe what the item might mean to the beneficiary.  

Artifcts can be a great way to start organizing your thoughts. Once you have the items in Artifcts, you could print out the items, and use the printout as part of your Memorandum. With Artifcts, you can also write directly in the "In the Future” field that the object in question is to be given to a particular person.  

By considering who should get the items, you can decide whether to wait to give it away now, or make it part of your estate. As you make these decisions, just update your Memorandum (and Artifcts!) at any time. 

This is a simple way to pass along items with the most meaning in your life to those who can most benefit. 

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© 2023 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

For many of us the history of the Holocaust is just that, history. If you have visited the US Holocaust Memorial Museum you may have a somewhat deeper appreciation for its continuing resonance in our lives. If you have also traveled to those regions where the concentration and labor camps existed, you may have a still greater understanding as well as that overwhelming desire to see these lessons learned live on through us and unite us against these evils. 

What we worry about at Artifcts is that as those of the generation who survived the horrors of the Holocaust dwindle in number, will enough of us take up the imperative to preserve those stories that exist within our own family histories? Today, on the International Remembrance Day, Arti Community member @Dr_Dani_Q shares her own family's stories of surviving the Holocaust in hopes of encouraging other families to look back in their family and community histories to ask the questions, document the answers, and share with others so it will not be lost. It will become a part of our living history.

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My Grandfather’s Story: A Marriage of Survival, Pride, and Service

It was evening. My great grandmother approached and drew closed the curtains at the window where my then 12-year-old grandfather sat, sparing him from the sight of the SS soldiers lining up and summarily executing his Jewish neighbors who had lived across the street.

This was Kaunus, Lithuania. The year was 1942. SS soldiers occupied homes across Lithuania, including the farmhouse where my grandfather lived. Having already suffered months of servitude to the SS soldiers they were forced to house, my great uncle secured secret passage for his brother’s family that same night as their neighbors were executed via the railroad he worked on. They traveled through Europe and eventually onward to safety in Brooklyn, New York, in 1949.  The uncle stayed behind, working in secret to secure passage for all who he could.

Many do not realize that millions of non-Jews, even those blonde-haired blue-eyed Lithuanians like my grandfather, were forced to serve in non-disclosed labor camps and executed by the Nazis during WWII. Unlike some who survived, as you will read about next, my grandfather spent his life telling his personal story from his youth during WWII in eastern Europe, lest we forget. He also traveled back to Lithuania, always returning to us with presents like amber and carved eggs, urging us to remember and embrace our cultural heritage. And he served for freedom and democracy, working as a translator in 10 languages for the US Army. 

My Grandmother’s Story: Twin Pillars of Survival and Trauma

My grandfather met my grandmother in New York in 1957 at a Belarusian cultural center. You know the type, even if only from movies: native food, dances, and all other aspects of community. The community center was the only place my grandmother would be among her own for the rest of her life. 

Unlike my grandfather, my grandmother's experience in 1943 as an 11-year-old Russian Orthodox Catholic child in a Nazi labor camp turned her away from her Belarusian homeland and the whole of Eastern Europe forever.

Scanned copy of a ship passenger manifest validating when my grandmother,

I have always been interested in my family history and genealogy. But it wasn’t until a year ago that I asked my uncle to tell me more about my grandmother’s experiences during WWII. All I knew was that as a child she was in a labor camp in Nazi-occupied Europe, and that one day, while bending down to pick up a piece of laundry she dropped while folding in the officers’ barracks, bullets were sprayed across the building by American troops who arrived to liberate the camp. The fallen laundry saved her life. “You still believe that story,” exclaimed my shocked and disbelieving uncle. 

He then told the me, the 32-year-old adult me, at last, the true story. 

My grandmother was lined up in an execution ditch. She watched as the SS officers executed one person after another. She was number 10. They were on number seven when American troops stormed into the camp, saving her (and her entire family).

Let me tell you, my grandmother, she was 5 feet tall and really fierce. The eldest of four siblings, survivor of a Nazi labor camp, ... you can understand why! I just wish I had known her story when she was alive, because knowing it made me understand and respect her that much more. I would have understood better the generational trauma I witnessed through her decisions and behaviors. I would have understood why she was so tough and closed-off, refusing to speak of her past. And why she chose to assimilate to her new life in the United States to such a degree that she never spoke her native languages again; never visited her homeland again. I just wish I had known. 

Our Story 

Today my family honors and preserves our heritage through food, certainly—cold borscht, balandelai, and koldunai/kolduny!—as well as travel, sharing of the trinkets my grandfather first bought for us with our own children, and of course by sharing our stories. 

You’ll see if you read the Artifcts I have shared that Artifcts has become our outlet to secure this history. I get to keep so many things that I wish I had from my mom and grandparents. It relieves a weird amount of stress from the “What if” category, and what I would leave behind in the terrible event that something happens to me. That’s why I am sharing my family’s story today. To urge you all, how ever, where ever you feel comfortable – capture your history so it can live on.

- Dr. Dani Q

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© 2023 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 

World traveler and five kids. Need I say more to justify how so much stuff can accumulate over time?

At one point in my life, I was moving every few years - living in four different countries overseas in a span of what seemed like no time at all. I've lived the last 19 years in the same house without the natural “cleansing” of a move (although I’ll admit I once had a trash can—with trash—that got packed and moved). And now, as the fourth child goes to college and we have only one left at home, it's time to downsize. It's time to change the narrative of our daily lives.

The children's reactions so far have included stress, from the change, and frustration with the perceived erasing of memories as we ask them to realize they’re moving on and we want to as well. As a person who looks to logic to control emotion and justify circumstances, I try to rationalize that the memories are just that, memories that cannot be taken away. However, those memories are triggered by objects that connect me to a specific time or moment in my past. Objects that often have stories behind them.