We have everything set up as a trust for our kids - but we are at that age where we have been responsible for putting more than a few relatives in the ground and it gets weird, believe me.
When someone dies but the spouse remains, like in Andria's situation, it gets especially hairy. The surviving spouse sometimes gives away things to one relative another thinks should go to them, or they allow others to "go through" things and other relatives feel slighted and even sometimes try to sue.
I've seen a lot the past 20 years and seen terrible behavior in people I thought were a lot more level headed and/or honest
The one that really gets me (had to deal with...) is folks saying they don't want anything from an estate, then changing their minds later and acting pissy when everything has been dispersed or thinking they have a right to demand cash when things are sold that they were not entitled to in the first place
Well, my parents don't have a TON of money by any stretch; they have a modest savings and retirement accts, most of which will now go to support my stepfather in his remaining years, of which I hope he has more than a few, being the sole survivor of my personal "parental generation" -- well, except my aunt, but she didn't have an *active* primary role in my upbringing -- but realistically, a man who's had 3 or 4 strokes (2 in the last 2 yrs), plus a massive heart attack and triple bypass, and who now lives alone at the age of 77, can't be expected to go on indefinitely. But my mom had a lot of really nice *things*, particularly her clothes and suchlike, which it's apparently falling to me to do something with, since no one else really WANTS to -- and yeah, it was a pretty sad yesterday, and I had a hard time getting to sleep last night. It would just have bugged me a lot if someone else got "first pick" of the very last things that my mom is capable of giving me -- and she was always giving me clothes when she was alive, so I know she'd want me to have whatever of hers I particularly liked.
There's still a GREAT DEAL of work to be done, packing up and dispensing the rest of her clothing, shoes, and purses to whichever agency, and disposing of underclothes and personal items that no one wants. I wear neither perfumes nor nail polish, so my aunt is either going to have to bite the bullet and take them, or they're going into the trash; the waste of perfectly good and some nearly-full products would distress me, but not as much as the smell of either perfumes or nail polish. I suppose my cousins and my stepsister might want some of the perfume, but I'm not sure any of them bother with nail polish. Still a buttload of costume jewelry too, and a few precious- and semi-precious-stone rings, which will definitely go to cousins and stepsister, and I suppose some might still come to me; I particularly wanted the "emerald" ring because it's a my birthstone.
The one thing I want which I found while going thru some dresser drawers is the photo album that was filled up when I was a kid, and I definitely want that, but I hate to just snatch it away from my stepfather; looking thru it might be painful for him for some time to come, but he still should have the opportunity. And yesterday, I finally got up the courage to ask my stepfather about my mom's last conscious hours, the morning it all started. Apparently she ate and drank more for breakfast that day than she'd been able or willing to consume for some time, but she wasn't talking, and she seemed a bit disoriented even before her respiration crashed. Which tells me, a) something was already going on, nudging her to her finish, probably her low BP robbing her brain of oxygen, b) at least she had a good last meal, and I was glad to learn that, because one of the irrational things I worried about, while she was lying there on life support in the ICU was wondering if she was hungry, if she was conscious of anything at all, and c) she was non-breathing for 7 and a half minutes before they got her intubated and ventilated, so it seems obvious that she would never have been able to "come back," that's too long without oxygen for a perfectly healthy person not to sustain *some* brain damage, and in her extremely compromised state, she would *never* have really been *herself* again.
Andria
Had a bunch of stuff to try to get done before my boy Rascal comes home tomorrow. Trash is burned, laundry done, clean sheets on his air mattress, most of the house vacuumed, started mopping, shit like that. I can do a bit then am out of breath and have to stop. Then do a bit more and stop again.
Life is good 
Whee. I'm off the rails today. Me & wife had some disagreeing yesterday evening. Feel like I stepped into a bear trap. She had brought in some food for me after having her sister in town. Well, I ate that and got full. Then, supper at her mom's house. Well, I was full so didn't want supper. "Well you can set and watch me eat."