Matter of Trust

Last week I witnessed a dying woman signing her Last Will and Testament. As you can imagine it was quite jarring seeing her in her hospital bed with tubes sticking out of her and the whole nine. Surprisingly, despite being on her death bed she was in very good spirits and quite chatty in her weakened state. Mrs. J made us feel at ease with her big smile as soon as we walked in the door to her hospital room. As I sat there and listened to everything that was going on it was quite interesting to me, because I am not usually privy to these conversations. When we left Mrs. J's room I felt quite sad for her, but not for the reasons that you might imagine.

You see Mrs. J has been married for the last 30-40 years to a man that she does not trust enough to handle any of her estate. She wants one of her children from a previous marriage to be her executor and to handle all of her affairs when she dies or if she is to become incapacitated before her death. She has such lack of trust in her husbands ability to be fair to her children once she is gone that she didn't even tell him that she was changing her Will. Unfortunately for her she did not have him sign a prenuptial agreement before they got married, so even with all the safeguards that have been put in place in her husband could still get a good share of her estate if he were to contest it.

All this got me to thinking that someday after I have made my millions(smile). If I were to get married would I have enough trust in my husband to make sure that he did right by E if I predeceased him. I would hope I would know him well enough to make sure that this was not the case. I have always been against prenuptial agreements, but in the case where there are children from prior relationships I now feel it is a must. I mean to be honest money does something to some people that make them go absolutely batty. Even hurting the people that you are suppose to love the most.

Can you ever really know enough about someone? or is trusting someone you love just a calculated risk?