On Apr 6, 2013, at 1:42 PM, ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote:
Since my father passed away a couple of months ago I
have been giving
serious thoguth to making a formal wil myself (when my father was around,
he would have known who to contact about various things).
My first ;'choice' is to give everything to a personal friend who has
been on this list. He shares enough of my interests that he will realise
what is valuable and what is perhaps not so valuable. But the problem is
tha said friend is about the same age as me, and it is not certainn he
wil loutlive me. Of course if he passes away long before me, I can
producve a new will, but it is worth putting a clause in the one I am
currently writing to say what happens if he is not around.
Now, as well as my classic computers there's also cmaeras, books, tools,
test gear, other electronci stuff, etc.
I would rather leave everything to one person/orgnaisation (rather than
say 'the classic computers go to <a>, the tools go to <b>, etc) or worse
still 'I leave my PDP11/45 system to <foo>', etc. In the latter case if I
have, say, swapped my 11/45 for an 11/790 at some point then <foo> gets
nothing, even though it was probably my intention that he would get the
11/70. In the former case, there could be disputes as to what category
certain things fall into -- is the 'Datacopy 300' (an early digital camera
that needs a classic PERQ to run it) a 'classic computer peripheral' or a
'camera', for example.
Does anyone have any serious suggestions for an organisation (and yes, I
am considering computer museums here, no matyter what I may have said i
nthe past) who would be prepared to take the lot and pass on that which
was of no use to them to other organisations or enthusiasts?
What I have done for my will was to designate someone who will responsibly
"dispose" of my collection. Here in the 'states another way to handle this
is
to set up a "trust" with a trustee and move all of the "assets" into
the trust prior
to "the end" and specify as part of the trust how the assets are to be disposed
of (usually the person whose assets are going into the trust is also the trustee
until "the end" at which point another trustee is specified usually as part of
the
will).
Of course to do this properly, you should seek financial/legal advice. I'm just
indicating what (in *very* general terms) what I've done.
TTFN - Guy