There are things in life you need to have. Not a nice to have, a need, if you have anyone in your life you love. Children, a spouse or partner… your readers, if you have none of the above. Don’t let your books die with you.
I’m talking about making a will. There’s a deeply personal reason behind this post, as you might guess. I’m urging you, all of you, to make a will. You can do it free and easy in most states – look at what a holographic will is – and then you can jump through hoops with a family lawyer to get a more complex estate all planned. But do not, I beg of you, delay in action. Make a simple will, don’t live without it for another day. Putting it off until you can set up a trust is not a plan at all. The good plan is to do simple now, then make it more complicated. In the meantime, you’ll be protected. And so will your loved ones, particularly if you are in a domestic partnership with no legal ties to the one you live with.
If you have no children or someone to leave your intellectual property to, don’t just leave the books to a cat sanctuary or suchlike without detailed instructions of what to do with them. I can’t tell you how many books I’ve wanted to buy, only to realize that when the authors died, so did the books, out of print and lost forever or at least until copyright expires on them, which is so long they are doomed to obscurity.
And another thing, while I have you here. Get your medical paperwork straightened out: advanced care directive, medical power of attorney, that sort of thing. Make it so that in case of dire circumstances, someone who loves you can show the doctors exactly what you wanted to be done – or not done – and you will spare them a lifetime of second-guessing themselves.
Even if you are in rude good health, young, and optimistic, this will take you very little time, and will be a wonderful gift to give your loved ones peace if you are unexpectedly taken. If you are ill, don’t delay. Don’t assume that recovery is just around the corner and this is not necessary. Make that will, simple now, complicated later when time or money allows. Anytime there is a major life change, update the will without delay. Don’t let your loved ones and your life’s work languish in limbo, expensive burdens, because you were not feeling like taking care of a simple chore.
Mad Genius Club 
26 responses to “Get it Done”
Well, yes, but without family beyond spouses, how/where do we find a designee for (in particular: book publications), not to mention general goods, collectibles, etc.?
I can’t answer that other than to say it likely requires some thought: perhaps good friends, a worthy charity, a library or a museum?
I fall into the category of no heirs. My will leaves everything split between The Heinlein Society and Hillsdale College. That is, except for my copyright. My will states that, at my death, all my works become public domain. Somewhere I wrote up all my reasoning for this, and I think it went up on accordingtohoyt as a guest post, but I can’t find it now. Basically I’d rather be Alexander Dumas than Ted Sturgeon.
I’ve considered the same or some kind of trust my wife has access to until her death (if I precede her) and then to be released either PD or CC (Attribution).
Yes, yes, yes. Get it in writing and make sure your heirs know where it is. If you have ANY doubt your holographic will (legal in Delaware) will be executed as you wish, then file it officially with the state via a lawyer.
I won’t go into the messy details.
Also, don’t — as a friend’s mother did — refuse to make a will because making a will meant you would die and she had no intentions of dying. She died anyway. Luckily, she and her husband lived in Delaware and since her husband survived her, he got everything. He made a will at once.
Never, ever assume your wishes will be executed!
Once you’re gone, only your will speaks for you and however much you’ve educated your heirs.
I had a neighbor who died a couple of years ago without a will, and it was a nightmare for his wife. Even though he was in pretty much the simplest family situation possible—only married once, all of the children he had were by his current wife—there were still delays and legal complications in getting the State of Colorado to come to the obvious conclusion that she should have everything. I can only imagine how bad it would have been if he’d been divorced and remarried or if there’d been children out of wedlock.
I’m also having to touch on this subject for my father, who isn’t dead, but is having heart trouble and had a scare this week. He has a will, but he realized that he’d never told me or my sister where to find it!
So, please, spare your heirs the headaches, especially while they’re grieving. Have a will, and make sure everyone knows where it is.
The other reason to have a will is to address your intellectual property. Who gets control? Making it all public domain as Frank (above) says to but who will handle the details to keep your books in print.
Your will is especially important if you’re a popular writer with many books to your name. John M. Ford is the cautionary tale. No will, ill-health with sudden death, family estrangement, live-in girlfriend (i.e., no legal standing), flaked-out literary agent. His books promptly went out of print.
Re: keeping my books in print, it’s up to the Big Jungle Co. If the books continue (or start) to sell, they go into my bank account that my best friend who is executor (and a big Heinlein fan) will control. He and his family are welcome to any income that generates, but it’s not his job to keep my stuff in print. I’m already burdening him with selling off all the artwork my wife and I collected over the years and giving the rest of the stuff away.
Yes, absolutely. My mother-in-law had been an LPN for years in nursing homes and heard all the horror stories. When she realized she would die from liver cancer, she made sure her will was as easy to probate as possible, including closing accounts, and making up lists of who got what.
It can take months to get through probate when you have set up everything so nothing goes through probate.
Man dies. All his securities are in a trust, the house and car are jointly owned with his wife. All sorts of shenagins. (And probate charged a good sum to say, “Nope, nothing to probate.”)
re: probate costs, The government always gets its share.
If I may get my soapbox out for a moment:
If you have no heirs, or do have heirs but your creations, whatever they be, are generating minimal income, the consider using your will to release your work to the public domain.
Because if you don’t, then your work will effectively be locked up and no use to anybody (and a hassle to your heirs; or else orphaned with no legal owners, but still protected by law for nobody’s benefit) for another seventy years. And possibly longer, given how updates to copyright terms have been lengthened ex post facto thus far.
There is a way to do so without ambiguity. Require in your will that all works be re-released with a Creative Commons Zero license upon your passing.
Tom Lehrer released all his music and recordings using that license several years before he died, and publicized the release so there could be no ambiguity about it.
I was acquainted with a western author who had no heirs, and publicly considered making his will stipulate that all his novels would enter the public domain on his passing. Unfortunately, as far as I have been able to tell, he did not follow through on that before he died. Now his books will languish for another seventy years, controlled by nobody knows who, but “protected” by law into the next century.
Thank you, I was hoping you would chime in on this.
Though in my distraction, I arsed up the closing tag on the link. sigh
So, how many of the copyright vultures seek out the heirs who know nothing about this or the worth and “secure” the rights for little or no money to turn around and make all those $0.99 eBooks on Amazon then slap down other people?
I have no numbers, but it has definitely happened. Along with other sketchy things. Like a well-known author’s grand(?)children getting public domain books reprinted as under copyright due to “restored material”. Said well-known author wrote to market, had over a dozen pen names, and frequently published several novels within a given year, plus shorts and novellas. So the idea that there was a treasure trove of “cut” material for multiple books, carefully filed away, is… dubious.
Despite trying to make money as an author I’m starting to think the actual working writers are harmed by copyright law more than helped with the really beneficiaries being lazy relatives and the kind of people who run NGOs.
I’m still pro-copyright, but a much more limited and restricted form than we have now. (Anarcho-capitalists argued for a while that intellectual property is a myth, but that’s a long, long discussion for another time.) But if you want more intellectual ammo to back up what you’re thinking, here are two suggestions to get you started:
– *[Free Culture](https://lessig.org/product/free-culture/)* by Lawrence Lessig, 2004. Lessig’s mind has since been broken by Orange Man Bad, and he was an avowed lefty even when he wrote this book, but it’s mostly very rational, and was part of the inspiration in creating the Creative Commons set of licenses (which I whole-heartedly support to this day).
– *[Against Intellectual Monopoly](https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/against-intellectual-monopoly/)* by Michelle Boldrin and David K. Levine. They analyze case histories of IP law, and come to conclusions similar to yours.
:holds up Equal Treatment of IP sign, because story-inventions are like tech-inventions:
So, hard limit of seventeen years, then? I generally lean toward 25 or 30, but okay. 😀
I go more to 20 years because that’s a round number that’s about a cultural generation (in the sense of having shared touch-points–someone ten years older or younger will usually have an idea of what you’re talking about), but the double-standard of “*THIS* kind of people-need-to-make-money-off-of-mind-work so we get more of it is important enough we have an upper limit, but THAT kind isn’t important so we’ll lock it down harder for centuries” can usually get folks to at least start thinking about why we have the system at all.
Twenty works. Twenty is good. Getting people to think past their “but this is the way we’ve always done it” prejudices is Even Better.
20 lets an author give birth or impregnate someone, immediate die after, and provide for the child to majority with some margin.
Oh, I’m still pro copyright even though I agree kinda with the “it’s a myth” types (tl;dr; it’s not a myth but it is an artificial construct that requires the state to exist).
I’ve said I’m happy with the old 28 and renewal which covers my outside case of “author gets a woman pregnant then immediately dies” and copyright should cover the pregnancy and raising of children to majority so call it 19 years (rounding 9 months up).
I also like a proposal a friend made: initial fixed periods with renewals but a fee to renew that increases each time and each renewal shrinks the additional time added.
I’m still mad at Lessing for arguing against the extensions at the SCUS as a 1st Amendment issue and not an ex-post facto issue (which Souter seemed to be all but begging him to do) and has owned that was a mistake.
I don’t know Boldrin and Levine so I’ll check it out.
My wife and I are going through this now, and the lawyer we’re using asks for both a primary and secondary executor other than spouse; they aren’t immune from random chance either.
This is one of the under-discussed social costs to making sure certain copyright hoarding companies (and not primarily Disney) don’t have to actually do something useful for society.