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Notes -
My mother has repeatedly told me and my brother that she wants us to cremate her cheaply rather than wasting thousands of dollars on an expensive burial and funeral. I see no reason to deviate from that course of action—though, really, it doesn't matter, since I'll be dead.
IMO, much more interesting than funeral plans are inheritance plans. I've been thinking that a cool way to divide up an inheritance would be to multiply each heir's share in proportion to the product of the square of his age and the square of his life expectancy. This would direct more money toward middle-aged heirs, in preference to (1) elderly heirs who already have enough money and will squander any new windfall and (2) child heirs whose money will be squandered by their parents.
My own will essentially follows the default for intestate succession, with a few changes:
The idea described in the previous paragraph is implemented
My brother is elevated to the same tier as my parents
"Per capita at each generation" is reverted to "per stirpes", which IMO makes much more sense
A parent or brother who has changed his name does not inherit (really just a backdoor way of ensuring that anyone so estranged that I don't even know his new name does not inherit)
I feel like this is surely more common than per capita among heirs. The only exception I can think of is if the deceased grandparent’s child dies young, shortly after having children, and then the children are raised by the grandparent(s) and treated by the will as children.
According to the Uniform Probate Code's commentary, a survey showed that 71 percent of people prefer "per capita at each generation", while only 19 percent prefer "per stirpes". (9 percent prefer a third system that was used in older versions of the Uniform Probate Code but is not explained in the current code's commentary. I guess the remaining 1 percent prefer something else entirely.)
As a first-born son who has spent a good part of his career untangling complex heirships involving people who died with 9 kids, who each had 7 kids of their own, etc. for a hundred years, I am strongly in favor of primogeniture.
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