Too many losses

I met someone who found me on the Internet when she was searching for insurance information. Her story is this: She suffered the loss of both parents last year within a couple months of each other. Living on the East Coast, she traveled to California often during the year due to their illnesses and of course the funerals. When beginning to work on settling their estate, she arrived in California to find that her parents' empty home had been burglarized.

As with any other loss, the insurance company requested an itemized list of everything stolen, date purchased and cost. Of course, she struggled since she didn't live there and now had little-to-nothing to trigger her memory of items that were missing. Doing the best she could, she submitted her insurance claim a few months later. The next conversation included the word "proof" that each of the items listed were, indeed, owned by her parents.

Yes, you guessed it, they didn't have an inventory of their belongings. My new friend had to accept - in her words - an unacceptable settlement. Her loss was in the high 10s of thousands of dollars!

The loss of her parents was devastating enough. But to go through the emotional process of finding she would face a financial loss, too - very sad considering an inventory would have made this much easier and result in a higher insurance settlement. Her words to me at the end of our first of many telephone conversations: "Where were you a couple years ago when I could have learned about needing an inventory? No one ever told me I'd need one. People need to know this before it's too late!"

I agree, and I'm doing my best to let each of you know. Hopefully you'll decide now to create your own inventory or purchase a professional service to do it for you.