Road Trips, Sentimental Items, and Estate Planning

We drove 810 miles for a Craigslist find. The woman who sold it to us had 150 more reasons to talk about planning ahead.

Four hundred and five miles. That is the distance between Spokane and Emmett, Idaho, and my wife and I drove it in both directions, roughly six hours each way. We spent about $130 in fuel getting there and another $130 getting home. Plane tickets north of $300 would have shrunk the trip to about an hour in the air, but some errands deserve the whole road and real leg room.

Our errand was a cookie jar.

It started with a short text thread to confirm the price on a Craigslist listing that had sat untouched for about a month. The jar in the photos was a classic: a hand-stamped ceramic hound dog with wide, round eyes that give it an almost owlish look, the kind of piece that makes you smile before you ever lift the lid. My mother-in-law’s grandmother once kept this very same styled jar in her kitchen. When her grandmother’s estate was decided, the jar was not passed down to my mother-in-law. It meant a great deal to her and very little to anyone else, so it went wherever things go when nobody writes down who should have them.

This Christmas, she is getting one back. (Surprise!)

What Is a Cookie Jar Actually Worth?

Value is a slippery word. Our particular jar is not easy to find online, which makes it hard to price. To a collector, it might be worth a few hundred dollars. To my mother-in-law, the memories attached to it are invaluable. To the woman who sold it to us, it was worth $25 and twenty minutes of trading stories.

That gap between market value and sentimental value sits at the heart of a quiet problem in estate planning. Wills and trusts tend to handle the big-ticket assets with great care: the house, the retirement accounts, the investment portfolio. The everyday objects that carry a family’s actual history often get folded into a single sentence directing that “all remaining personal property” be divided among the children. That works fine until two siblings want the same quilt, or until the one granddaughter who treasured the cookie jar is never asked at all.

This is hardly a niche concern. In Trust & Will’s 2026 Estate Planning Report, a national survey of 5,000 adults, one in four Baby Boomers named sentimental items or family traditions as the most meaningful legacy they hope to leave behind. That’s one in four who are in the midst of the great wealth transfer telling you that their most meaningful legacy they hope to leave is NOT financial. The same report found that only 26 percent of U.S. adults have a will at all. Many of us know exactly which belongings matter most, and very few of us have written it down.

The Jar Rescuer

The best part of the trip turned out to be the seller’s story. Her late mother, a California woman, proudly called herself a “jar rescuer.” Where hoarders accumulate and collectors curate, this passionate woman rescued. She took in every cookie jar she could find and made sure each one stayed in excellent condition. When she passed away, she left her four children more than 650 cookie jars and no clear plan for what to do with them.

She left her four children more than 650 cookie jars and no clear plan for what to do with them.

One daughter, the woman we met, stepped up. She hosted weeks of estate sales, packed up the jars that did not sell, brought them home with her, and has been patiently selling them off ever since. About 150 remain. Having lived through the experience herself, she knows better than to leave those jars to her sons. Her goal is to bring the count to zero before her own estate ever needs to be decided.

Her mother clearly loved those jars. But love without a plan handed her children a project measured in weeks of sales, a houseful of boxes, and years of online listings. The daughter’s response, quietly paring down what she owns so her sons will never face the same burden, is one of the most thoughtful pieces of estate planning I have come across. This did not require a single legal document, but if something happened to her tomorrow, it immediately would.

How Washington Treats Your Belongings

In legal terms, cookie jars, quilts, jewelry, tools, and record collections are “tangible personal property,” meaning physical things you can hold, as opposed to bank accounts, stocks, or real estate. Washington gives residents a practical tool for passing these items along, commonly called a personal property memorandum or a “separate writing.”

The concept is simple. Your will refers to a separate list, and that list names specific items along with the people who should receive them. In Washington, RCW 11.12.260 permits this arrangement when the list is either in your handwriting or signed by you, describes the items and recipients with reasonable certainty, and is referenced by your will or trust. Our firm includes this list with all our provided wills in case our clients can make use of them.

The real advantage is flexibility. Because the list can be prepared before or after you sign your will, and can be revised later, you can add the cookie jar you inherited last spring without paying to redraft the entire will. In Washington, if you leave behind more than one list and they conflict, the most recent one controls.

There are limits worth knowing. These lists generally cannot pass money, bank accounts, securities, or other intangible property, and Washington’s statute also excludes property used primarily in a trade or business. In Washington, if the person you named passes away before you and your list does not name a backup, that particular gift typically fails. Most importantly, the list only works when your will or trust properly refers to it. A name taped to the bottom of a cookie jar is a lovely family tradition, but on its own it is not a secure plan.

Five Lessons From a $25 Cookie Jar

1. Ask, rather than assume.

The items that matter most in an estate are often the ones nobody thinks to ask about. A simple conversation about who would love to have what can surface attachments you never knew existed. Have that conversation while everyone can still tell the stories.

2. Write it down the right way.

If an item carries meaning for someone, put it in a personal property memorandum that your will or trust references, and keep the list somewhere your family or personal representative can find it. Revisit it whenever your belongings or your relationships change.

3. Tell the story behind the item.

A list tells your family who gets the jar. A sentence or two about why it mattered tells them what they are actually receiving. Consider writing those stories in a separate letter so your legal list stays clear and easy to follow.

4. Give collections their own plan.

Six hundred and fifty cookie jars is an extreme example, but plenty of families inherit coin sets, firearms, vinyl records, or decades of holiday decorations. Decide whether a collection should be sold, donated, or divided, and name someone who is comfortable handling it. For pieces with real resale value, a professional appraisal can save your family a great deal of guesswork.

5. Give while you can.

The seller in Emmett is doing something many people never consider: reducing her own collection during her lifetime. Passing a meaningful item to a loved one while you are here lets you see the joy it brings, and it means one less decision for your family later. A modest gift like a cookie jar falls far below the federal annual gift tax exclusion, though larger lifetime gifts are worth discussing with an attorney first.

The Value of a Jar

On Christmas morning, a hand-stamped hound dog will be sitting under the tree, wrapped and waiting. My mother-in-law will lift the lid and, I suspect, find a little piece of her grandmother’s kitchen inside. The final tally was 810 miles, $260 in fuel, $25 for the jar, and twenty minutes of stories from a woman doing her best to spare her sons from a burden she knows all too well. It was some of the best money we have spent all year.

If you have a cookie jar of your own, the item nobody else would think twice about but someone in your family would gladly drive 405 miles to bring home, take a few minutes this holiday season to write it down. And if you would like help making sure your will, trust, and personal property memorandum work together the way you intend, the attorneys at Cornerstone Legal PLLC focus their practice on estate planning for families across Washington and we are always glad to talk it through.

You can learn more at www.cornerstonelegalpnw.com.