Saturday, March 12, 2005
Interest grows in passing along values and beliefs.
CINCINNATI (AP) -- Judy Neal hopes she instilled some of her values in her son. But just in case, she wrote it down.
"Try to see both sides of a story," she wrote in her ethical will. "Look beyond the surface and the obvious. It took me a while to learn this."
The centuries-old practice of passing along beliefs, personal experiences and values to loved ones had largely faded from widespread practice by the 20th century. But ethical wills have begun to re-emerge in the past five years, as catastrophic events underline the unpredictability of life and many see society as increasingly materialistic and transient.
"People often feel invincible until they see cataclysmic events like 9/11 or the tsunami and realize that no one knows what will happen tomorrow and they better leave something to tell people who they were," said Karen Russell, founder and executive director of the Los Angeles-based National Grief Support Services Inc.
"Even soldiers in Iraq are realizing this and writing their own forms of ethical wills through letters telling their family what to remember about them if they don't make it home."
Growing trend
Organizations such as the American Association of Retired Persons, the American Society on Aging and the Spiritual Eldering Institute in Boulder, Colo., have included the topic in their magazines and conferences. Spiritual counselors and health care specialists offer courses, and financial advisers and estate attorneys discuss ethical wills with their clients.
Dr. Barry Baines, associate medical director of Hospice of the Twin Cities, said the 75 hits or so daily on an ethical will Web site he began in 1999 jumped to about 250 after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and now average about 800.
While anyone can jot down thoughts on a piece of paper for family and friends, the formalized wills tend to provide a document more likely to be preserved through the years.
Neal's parents left no permanent record of their values and beliefs that could be passed along to future generations.
"There are so many things I won't ever know about their thoughts and experiences," said Neal, 58, of Cincinnati, who leads workshops on ethical wills as a church volunteer. "I hope that my son has picked up some of my values and beliefs through the years, but I also want his children and their children to know who I was."
A typical workshop teaches when to write a will and how to outline and organize the material and offers writing exercises.
Dying generation
Baines, who wrote the book "Ethical Wills: Putting your Values on Paper," said many of the people who contact him are baby boomers who realize that their parents' generation is disappearing and that they are aging as well.
"More and more of them are deciding that they want and need to leave behind more than just money and possessions," said the Minneapolis doctor who became passionate about ethical wills while working with a hospice patient in 1997.
The patient, who was dying of cancer, became concerned that he had nothing to leave his family. Baines remembered reading a book that discussed Jewish ethical wills and suggested that the patient do one.
The first examples of ethical wills recorded on paper began to show up around the 11th century, and much of the encouragement for writing the documents has come from the Jewish community with its emphasis on remembrance and legacy.
Ethical wills are not legally enforceable. But the founder of an elder law firm in Sarasota, Fla., said he suggests them to clients because they add more humanity to estate planning.
"When you focus strictly on transmitting wealth and property, it can make it a very cold and heartless process for everyone," said Advocates in Aging founder Ira Wiesner.
Learning more
The Rev. Janice Ledford, chaplain at the Llanfair Retirement Community in Cincinnati, said ethical wills can add a needed dimension.
"When I do funeral services, I often give a story or a twist on a person's life that their kids never saw," she said. "This way they can tell their children what they want them to know."
Tom Weaver, 58, of St. Paul, Minn., persuaded his 94-year-old mother to write one a few years ago.
"I already knew a lot about her values, but the ethical will made it concrete and real. It's a representation of her lifetime that her children and grandchildren can keep always," he said.
Peg Weaver, of Brainerd, Minn., wrote of the importance of honesty, compassion and respect.
"Respect begins at home," she said. "Respect yourself and the members of your family. Respect life, yours and others."
Weaver is glad she wrote the will.
Caution
Martha Holstein, an ethics and aging consultant who also teaches religious studies at DePaul University in Chicago, cautioned that if people have revelations such as an abortion when they were young, they need to be sure others are ready to hear what they have to say.
"Don't write what you don't want people to read," she said.
There also is the danger of using wills to make others feel guilty or to try to script others' lives, Baines said, especially when the document isn't presented until after the death and family members can't respond.
More people are sharing the wills while they are alive, presenting them on special occasions such as births and marriages.
Ethical wills are often written on archival paper with fancy type fonts. But new formats also are emerging. Russell, whose grief support organization is operated mostly through a Web site, is creating a section where people can create multimedia wills with photos, images and sounds.
"All of us as humans have this feeling that our lives should be part of something larger than ourselves," Baines said. "The ethical will lets us show that we were here."