If your family faced a disaster, would all of your hard work and family records survive? I think about this every once in awhile, but always put it in the back of my mind and say "it will never happen to me!" Well, I should think about this and be more proactive because I live in an area where we are all sitting on a fault line. Bring on the earthquakes! Seriously, I spent the month of September in Europe. One of the last places we stayed was in the Cinque Terre, Italy. Five little towns on the Mediterranean Sea. A bit of paradise! Well, if you have seen the news lately, you probably have heard that two of the five towns were hit by tremendous flooding and mudslides. It was so hard to see the videos and recognize that I was just in that very spot a month ago. Who could have predicted the future?
So, are your records protected? I will definitely be working on mine. I do a fairly decent job of backing things up and making copies, but what happens if I die and no one wants my records. What happens if family members just start junking my precious records? I found this out the hard way when a great aunt of mine died and I had no idea. When I started researching and went back to where she lived, I was told that her husband had tossed everything so that he could sell the house! I was heartbroken!
I ran across this article in the FamHist blog. It was interesting and gave me important food for thought. It gives a sample codicil that can be written up and put with your will. Since we have just updated our wills and such, this was perfect timing. I didn't even know that such a thing could be done.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure...
Mt. Timpanogos Temple, photo by Rick Satterfield, used with permission
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