How to List Assets in Your Estate Plan

A Schedule of Tangible Personal Property

By Patricia Louise Nelson

On many of the revocable living trusts we draft, we include an attachment called a “schedule” of tangible personal property items and who is to receive them.  Why is that?

Well, we put the list on a schedule because schedules are easy to change.  You can write on the schedule to add new items and the people to whom you want them to go.  You can prepare a new schedule, sign, and date it, and replace the old schedule with it. 

Tangible personal property changes over time.  We acquire new things and sell or otherwise get rid of other things. So, it helps to have a list that is easy to change.

I encourage you to be very specific about the items in question.  I prefer a photo over “my grandmother’s diamond ring.”  In fact, photos work really well in nearly all situations.  I prefer “framed print number 132/325 of a mountain behind a lake by Joe Smith size 32 inches by 19 inches” over “the print on my bedroom wall.”

I think only really important things should be on this list.  Things with either intrinsic value or sentimental value. I once had a 93-year-old retired bookkeeper bring me many pages of legal length ledger paper with a thorough list of all of her tangible personal property items.  As I recall, one person was to receive the magazine rack next to the toilet, and another person was to receive the magazines!