Today I’m going to talk about a senior couple whose life changed suddenly and they had their affairs taken care of by a Trust Officer at a local bank.
So this woman who was 72 years old had a husband with dementia, she was taking a trip to Florida before she went on a scheduled around the world trip that her and her husband used to do, but he is now unable so she placed him in a temporary nursing home so that she could continue to travel when she returned from Florida.
Her plans were cut short as she was visiting family in Florida and unexpectedly died. Prior to her leaving she met with a Trust Officer at her local bank and wrote up all of her desires for her financial and personal belongings to be handled by the Trust Officer in case anything happened to her.
I was hired by this Trust Officer as what I call an Ethical Estate Organizer which means I was to find all of the l valuables in the home and organize the entire home in order for other companies such as the appraisers, auctioneers, an estate company and real estate agent to each play a part in this home sale process.
This was not a simple task as they were historians and they had over 20,000 books located mostly in the basement but all around their home. They did not have the usual CD’s, DVD’s, VHS, TV’s and stereo clutter that most homes have but they had: newspapers, magazines, comic papers, antiques, tools and as I searched for valuables I found: coin, stamp, WWII and priceless book collections that all needed to be organized, appraised and sold.
The first thing the bank required was for me to estimate how many hours and assistants would be needed and I did this by listing each room’s items such as the kitchen had 4 food cabinets, 3 junk drawers, 4 dish cabinets, under the sink items and 4 large drawers. There were 10 rooms to itemize like this and then the basement was divided into 6 different areas to describe its content. So I would list large items that designated each area and took photos of before and after for reference once all was organized.
I needed 2 assistants 2x’s a week and 5-6 assistants for 3 5-hr day Sundays to complete this job. I estimated approx.. 200 hours and finished in 172 hours. I started April 25 and worked minimum of 20 hours per week and finished by the end of May. Our working agreement target date was the first week of June so we were so happy to finish early so the bank could schedule the estate sale and then have the house sold.
The categories for this house were Husband, Trash & Sell. The Trust Officer dictated what items were to be kept and found for the husband since his personal belongings would be sent to the nursing home. They did not have any children and very few family members involved with the distribution of their belongings.
The Trust Officer also dictated what kind of paperwork was to be kept and what can be trashed as we filled a 20 and 30 yard dumpster – huge amounts of paperwork were discarded as they were not worth anything to the public just important to them. They had everything categorized, labeled and filed like a library but the paperwork must have gotten out of hand as they aged because the entire basement was just loaded with all kinds of clutter that needed to be sorted.
They both had several containers filled with medications that needed proper disposal as you cannot just throw items like that away. Several bags went to public works department (those that had no narcotics) and Walgreens which could include narcotics.
The most interesting thing we found that I never want to find again were when the 5 of us women were clearing out their freezer in the basement and unraveled saran wrap only to find 2 dead cats they had kept and not disposed of. I was so thankful I was not the only one in the basement at the time because I think I would have fainted. Who does that?????
Many book collectors were contacted along with Auctioneers to survey the books and estimate the value of some of the huge book collections they had. I’ve never seen that many books before in someone’s house, rather than a library. It obviously made them happy and the estate company sold over $30,000 worth of their items. It was so worth the time to find, organize and research so that they could make as much money as possible for the husband in the nursing home.
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