Do You Have A Plan For Your Guns If You Die?

I thought about this when I set up my NFA trust in my early 20’s. I’ve outlined in writing what happens to my NFA items, but everything else is purely verbal, and my wife and best friend know what to do. It probably would be a good idea to put it in writing.
 
Wife has her CHP, and one of my two sons works in a gun shop so....
They can do whatever they want with what few I have left.

I remember asking my dad three days before he died what he wanted me to do with all his guns.
He looked at me and asked, “ Do you think where I’m going I’m gonna need ‘em?"

We both knew he was dying, and soon. You had to be threre. We laughed till we cried. It was the funniest thing anyone ever said to me.
 
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fieldgrade said:
Wife has her CHP, and one of my two sons works in a gun shop so....
They can do whatever they want with what few I have left.

I remember asking my dad three days before he died what he wanted me to do with all his guns.
He looked at me and asked, “ Do you think where I’m going I’m gonna need ‘em?"

We both knew he was dying, and soon. You had to be threre. We laughed till we cried. It was the funniest thing anyone ever said to me.
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That is sort of how I feel about it. I will enjoy them for as long as I can but in the end they don't have much meaning for my family. The wife can shoot and has a CHP but she really is not into them. I have a list with the values of which I made for insurance purposes. She has access to it and I have attached the names and numbers of a few dealers who can help her sell them if I go unexpectedly. If I live long enough I will start to sell them off one by one until there are just a few and do something fun with the money. In the end they are just things I have acquired.
 
JT said:
I have a plan for mine. Somebody's going to like it.
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Why JT. I don't know what to say.


blue eye said:
i plan to start selling my guns 2 will go to my grandson. i cant let another man fondle my guns, my wife can be fondled, but not my guns
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Got any pictures of the wife? 😁


Notacop said:
They're going in my hole with me. Cosmaline everything, even my bones
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My wife said that about mine. I told her I wanted someone to continue to use and enjoy them, not bury them.


BatteryOaksBilly said:
A man I have known for over 50 years is leaving us.....a little every day....he now no longer remembers his wife of 50 years. This man is a Shooter...he has been S.C. and N.C. High Power Rifle Champion. He was S.C. Pistol Champion. He shot shoulder to shoulder with Herschel Anderson, Jim Clark, Thelbert Almond. He has pictures of him and Carlos Hathcock shooting prone side by side at Camp Perry. He IS the real deal. He has several Match winning Clark and Almond rimfire, center fire and hard ball guns...a half dozen "built" M1As. These are guns that have won nationally and are historically important. Another 50 handguns and over 20 Randall Knives including his that he ordered and used while in Viet Nam.
His wife called me Friday to tell me she wanted me to be the first to see, buy and help her sell all the guns and knives and pocket watches. While this breaks my heart she and I both need to accept that he is gone.....and so for the Third time in my life this sorrowful duty has called me. I will help because he was my friend. I will help her because he loved her so.
Saturday the wife called me in tears.....I feared the worst and yet it was worst than I thought. A person that had wheedled his way into her confidence got her to leave the house and go shopping with his wife. He said he would stay and look after my friend. After she got home and they left she saw that her husbands Randall #1 and a pistol were missing. This cowardly Bastard had taken her trust for him and used it to rob her. His wife was surely complicit. Two late 70s people that are sick and trusting taken advantage of by this jackal.
Have a plan, implement it as soon as you foresee difficulties. We have predators amongst us that see your problems, even as you die, as plunder to them.
I am thankful to say between @Michael458 and @Etruett I will never have this problem. I think in the next few months I will place some very valuable guns into the homes that I want them to go to.....It is time. Billy
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Don't have any words but I have got a rope and lots of tall trees.


Diablos said:
those type dont deserve to draw breath
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Well maybe one more. The last one.
 
Sorry for your loss of your friend.

My hope is that my children and grandchildren enjoy firearms as much as I do. I have enough Glocks to outfit a few generations worth of descendents.

Beyond that, hopefully my wife doesn't sell my guns for what I told her I paid for them. 😁
 
Alabamacoastie said:
We are finally at a place in life where I buy what I want (within reason) , she buys what she wants (within reason) , and we don't give each other any grief (we aren't rich but we are finally comfortable and no longer living paycheck to paycheck).

She knows about my safes, but she never asks to look inside. She knows I've been buying gold and silver. However, she has no idea what I've got.

If I made a list and tallied up the USED value of all my guns and showed her the big round number, I think she'd be really impressed with what I've collected over the last 4 years...
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To clarify, I'm right there with you. As things stand today I don't ask her about her's, and she doesn't ask me about mine. It's the aspect of 25 years worth of collective value viewed all at once might make someone re-think our standing lassez-faire policies.
 
BatteryOaksBilly said:
A man I have known for over 50 years is leaving us.....a little every day....he now no longer remembers his wife of 50 years. This man is a Shooter...he has been S.C. and N.C. High Power Rifle Champion. He was S.C. Pistol Champion. He shot shoulder to shoulder with Herschel Anderson, Jim Clark, Thelbert Almond. He has pictures of him and Carlos Hathcock shooting prone side by side at Camp Perry. He IS the real deal. He has several Match winning Clark and Almond rimfire, center fire and hard ball guns...a half dozen "built" M1As. These are guns that have won nationally and are historically important. Another 50 handguns and over 20 Randall Knives including his that he ordered and used while in Viet Nam.
His wife called me Friday to tell me she wanted me to be the first to see, buy and help her sell all the guns and knives and pocket watches. While this breaks my heart she and I both need to accept that he is gone.....and so for the Third time in my life this sorrowful duty has called me. I will help because he was my friend. I will help her because he loved her so.
Saturday the wife called me in tears.....I feared the worst and yet it was worst than I thought. A person that had wheedled his way into her confidence got her to leave the house and go shopping with his wife. He said he would stay and look after my friend. After she got home and they left she saw that her husbands Randall #1 and a pistol were missing. This cowardly Bastard had taken her trust for him and used it to rob her. His wife was surely complicit. Two late 70s people that are sick and trusting taken advantage of by this jackal.
Have a plan, implement it as soon as you foresee difficulties. We have predators amongst us that see your problems, even as you die, as plunder to them.
I am thankful to say between @Michael458 and @Etruett I will never have this problem. I think in the next few months I will place some very valuable guns into the homes that I want them to go to.....It is time. Billy
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I already am doing just that.
 
Little old lady who owns the furniture store in town asked me to go through her deceased father's & husband's guns. Apparently both were collectors & had quite a number of guns, some of which are supposedly rare/valuable. She knows nothing about guns & wants someone she trusts to help her figure it out.

For me, my wife doesn't really know guns & our daughter isn't into them. Grandchildren are highly unlikely, but all my kid cousins are gun guys & will be gifted select pieces. My cousin who'll be managing our trust & our daughter's affairs when we're gone will also be the executor of our will, so we should be GTG in that regard.
 
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I have to get something official going with a family planning attorney and also get the info on what happens to firearms if I die intestate. As next of kin, in NC my son gets everything unless I have a will stating otherwise as far as I know. I had to go under for a short procedure last month, and I gave my son a sealed envelope with safe combo, exactly what's in it and instructions to contact a certain attorney if something happened. I need to get with that atty. and make whatever needs to be done official regarding the guns.
 
A list is good. I have listed every one that ever came into my possession, and so noted every one that left my possession, back to all the ones I sold for my dad after he passed 26 years ago.
 
Unfortunately, blood sometimes is the strongest bond. My wife's side of the family has had several tragedies. One was her Aunt probably committing suicide late in life with no kids. She had always told my MIL that everything she came into the marriage with in her mid 40's would go to my wife and her siblings, realistically, all our kids. Unfortunately with no will, guess how that went? Her husband, after her death said he needed to look out after his family.

He's a lying piece of sh!t who received hundreds of thousands of dollars from a land sale a year before his wife overdosed on pills. He also coerced $100k + from my wife's grandfather on his deathbed 20 years ago. I'm not bitter about the money, I will provide for my own. I'm bitter about what this turned into because of no written plan and someone looking to profit from it.

Get your "stuff" in order. You never know what might happen.
 
After a recent health scare where things went sideways in a hurry I can tell you how much it sucks to be laying in the emergency room naming off stuff and how much to get for it
making sure she knew where the combinations for the safes were kept.
I always pictured it as calm and orderly but it's desperate and chaotic
I now realize.its too much of a burden to place on my wife .
Soon I'll give one firearm to each brother then begin selling off the rest tiil I get it down to my favorite.ten or twenty with specific instructions on what to do with these when I'm gone.
 
I hope my daughters will keep and pass on the single shots, a .243 and a particular .22. I don’t care what they do with the AR’s.
 
I have a spreadsheet with make, model, acquired date and price I paid for all my stuff including the safe, suppressors and SBR, most of my handguns are police trades. My wife and daughters have no interest, perhaps my future son in law will, no grandkids yet. Edit: all ammo box or a case has date purchased and cost per round on the box and on a card inside the case.
 
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All of mine are cataloged and a copy sent to a buddy in GA. I have a copy in the safe on a thumb drive and a copy on my pc. Purchase date, price paid etc.

My sister gets a few sentimental pieces, I have a new niece and depending on her like/dislike she will get a few and our son will get the rest.

Right now my wife and I are the only ones that know the safes combos. I wish my son good luck if we go before updating our will....
 
My father left my brother and I a letter outlining the important guns and why. For example the Parker double that was his first gun and the shotguns he used hunting and in the early years of sporting clays after its introduction. The list isn’t long and at the end he said that the rest are just guns and not to feel an attachment to them and to sell them if we wished. He didn’t leave any to us specifically but left it open to us to choose how we wanted to.

I know this won’t work for everybody but my brother and I get along very well. I intend to do something similar and put it in my safe along with estimated values.
 
I'll be dead... If she sells them for what I told her I paid for them I still won't care... 😂
 
Button Pusher said:
I have a spreadsheet with make, model, acquired date and price I paid for all my stuff including the safe, suppressors and SBR, most of my handguns are police trades. My wife and daughters have no interest, perhaps my future son in law will, no grandkids yet.
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Before i moved out of MI 2yrs ago, I made a spreadsheet because the movers required it. It is now... well, it's so out of date that just the guns i've bought since then alone qualify me as a "gun super owner".

My wife has been bugging me for a few years to at least write something down about what to do with me and my junk once I die (burn me and dump me somewhere nice). Being the average guy, i'm convinced I'll never die... but i'm a little less convinced each day. The covid thing is giving me a kick in the pants. Knowing it hit me like a truck out of nowhere was a little bit of harsh reality.

My wife doesn't care for guns. We have no kids, I got no brother left, one sister is pretty much written out of my life, the other has 2 kids and only one has even a little interest in guns. Her side is about the same way. Aside from one of her brother in laws and one or two of my cousins, nobody wants what I got. Everything about me ends when I do.

The NFA items will concern me, because if i accidentally break my promise and die before the mrs, she's NOT going to want to deal with any of the gun stuff. She doesn't even like transporting guns between states because of the stupid laws. Not a lot of friends, so she's going to be looking at mighty hill to climb. My gears are turning about what to plan for her.
 
I’m planning on taking my guns with me when I die! Ammo too! I don’t know what they will have up there and just want to be prepared!
 
I will be selling mine prior to my departure along with all the ammo, holsters, steel targets, cases, safe, and then taking an epic trip across the globe.
 
My son has no interest in guns so I've sold off all my revolvers and anything that could be considered collectable. Now I only have what I carry and a couple 22's to shoot at the range. I just didn't want to leave another problem for my wife to handle when I'm gone.
 
Alabamacoastie said:
For the last 3 years I've been saying, "I'm going to sit down and write out the model, serial#, and current value of each of my guns just to make it easier on my wife." I still haven't done it...

I hope that I'm raising my daughters properly so that they'll want them one day... But, you never know... Especially if I kick the bucket early, in some freak accident.

I guess it's time to actually make that list...
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When I bought insurance on my “accumulation” of firearms, I photographed each piece along with a piece of paper with a sequential number. The list of items (in a spreadsheet) also includes the photo number for each. That should help in case of an insurance claim and for the wife and daughter when “my time comes”. Without that, it will be a lot of work for them to understand what’s what.
 
Jeppo said:
When I bought insurance on my “accumulation” of firearms, I photographed each piece along with a piece of paper with a sequential number. The list of items (in a spreadsheet) also includes the photo number for each. That should help in case of an insurance claim and for the wife and daughter when “my time comes”. Without that, it will be a lot of work for them to understand what’s what.
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That's a great idea. I don't know if I should take out an insurance policy or not. I guess I need to look and see what's covered in my homeowners policy and see if I need to add on to that value.

I don't really have any true collector pieces, but what I have does add up...

I'd hate to lose them due to theft or house fire...
 
Alabamacoastie said:
That's a great idea. I don't know if I should take out an insurance policy or not. I guess I need to look and see what's covered in my homeowners policy and see if I need to add on to that value.

I don't really have any true collector pieces, but what I have does add up...

I'd hate to lose them due to theft or house fire...
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Look here,
Post in thread 'Interesting trend in the insurance biz'
https://carolinafirearmsforum.com/i...trend-in-the-insurance-biz.73306/post-1297851

[https://carolinafirearmsforum.com/index.php?threads/homeowners-insurance-firearm-coverage.60597/
 
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Jeppo said:
When I bought insurance on my “accumulation” of firearms, I photographed each piece along with a piece of paper with a sequential number. The list of items (in a spreadsheet) also includes the photo number for each. That should help in case of an insurance claim and for the wife and daughter when “my time comes”. Without that, it will be a lot of work for them to understand what’s what.
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I've prepared a list titled "who wants Dad's guns" that I've given to my 4 children and my nephews and nieces. My kids got first dibs, then the nephews and nieces. Some I've already given away and some have been noted to go to them as I no longer can use them (or die). The remainder I've been selling on this forum and on Gunboards. I've whittled my arsenal down a lot. I've also sold or given away a lot of ammunition, surplus stuff, etc. The goal is to not have my wife have to deal with getting rid of the stuff when I'm gone.
 
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I have a detailed inventory list with serial numbers and the price that I paid. Several pages long, but the first page has the contact info for @Tim and further instructions.
 
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