WHO WILL GET YOUR MONEY?

Probably the IRS -- unless you read this or a similarly easy-to-follow guide to living estate planning and the pratfalls of probate. Barnes, who also wrote What Investing Is All About, wheelchairs you through the formidable probate process, careful always to provide just the fight amount of encouraging sympathy (it's ""really nobody's fault that probate takes so long"" though many executors and attorneys ""are exasperatingly slow"") tempered by cautionary case histories like schnook Mr. Adams who named Aunt Mamie executrix! He then pushes you solemnly into the ""death tax problem"" (Mr. Rowe's aged maiden aunts weren't so lucky and ""once again the IRS became a sizable heir at the conference table""); on to wills and the question of ""Why do people die intestate?"" (mainly ""inertia""); on to trusts, questions of ownership, and finally into a meeting with the financial planning team which is a relief because your job is over and now in the hands of ""proven experts"" where perhaps it should have been at the start. The tone is disquietingly funereal, the pace properly dignified, and the content impeccably clear.