I get surprised when people don't know things about

[Wingus Dingus]

4. In my experience, if there's any monetary value to heirlooms, then

some family members will surprise you by knowing all about it in advance, and will be ready to collect, like vultures, as soon as the funeral's over. That's how my husband's sister ended up with things like their grandmother's jewelry (which she later told everyone had been "stolen in a break-in"--yeah right, we're pretty sure she sold or pawned it) and some of their grandfather's antique guns.

She got these items by apparently having the gall to announce "Grandma told me privately she wanted me to have these items when she died" and although no one believed her, no one had the cojones to push back. My husband had no idea or expectation that any of the grandchildren were getting anything at all out of the estate--there were more than two dozen grandchildren, his grandparents were not well-off, and he just assumed his grandmother's surviving middle-aged children would get whatever there was. He only found out about his sister's looting years later.