When developing a comprehensive estate plan it is often a good idea to identify specific items in your will which may have particular sentimental or other value. When determining the amounts of liquid assets to provide to future heirs it may not make as much difference whether the source is a savings account or some other financial device, when there are specific, one-of-a-kind items the more specificity with which your intent can be related through your estate planning documents the better.

Ideally such a specific instruction would avoid the type of intra-family acrimony that can be seen in a case involving a collection of autographed baseballs. When a baseball enthusiast and collector passed away in December an ugly struggle ensued over the ownership of his extensive collection of autographed baseballs. The collection includes baseballs signed by the likes of babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle and Lou Gehrig, among others.

After the death the older son filed a civil harassment suit against his younger brother. The older brother claimed that the younger brother had harassed him after the older brother took some of the baseballs from their mother's house. Just a couple of days late the older brother was arrested for theft for taking the baseballs. The older brother claims that he had his mother's consent when he took the baseballs.

According to the late collector's will, all of his possessions were to go to his wife. The widow says that her husband had made it very clear that he wanted the collection of baseballs to stay intact and to go to the younger brother. The older brother asserts that his father had always told him that he was to receive the baseballs.

Absent of any specific mention of the collection in his will it is very difficult to accurately determine what the man's intent may have been. I could even be that he had told different people different things at various points. Whatever his intentions may have been they likely did not include this a protracted legal battle and criminal charges.

Source: Chicago Tribune "Fight over autographed baseballs leaves Pogofsky family battered" Lisa Black, July 5, 2011