DEAR ABBY: My older brother, age 70, is making his estate plans with his partner. We have no other siblings or children. I told him I\u2019m financially secure and don\u2019t need him to leave me anything, but he insisted on having my Social Security number, saying it\u2019s needed for beneficiary bequests. I called him back before disclosing the information, because I wanted to make sure it was really him. <\/p>\n
He later called me and asked for my passport number because his partner has assets in China, and the paperwork required more information. That was too much information for me, and I asked him to take me out of his bequests entirely. He fussed about having to contact the lawyer and change the trust information but said he would take care of it. Now, he\u2019s no longer speaking to me. <\/p>\n
Abby, my brother never disclosed that he would need anything beyond a Social Security number. Should I feel guilty about the added expense of editing his trust? — TROUBLEMAKER SIS IN TEXAS\t<\/p>\n
DEAR SIS: You should absolutely NOT feel guilty for refusing to reveal the information your brother was requesting! Are you SURE it was your brother calling and asking for this highly personal information and not a scammer? I ask because a beneficiary\u2019s Social Security number and\/or passport number is NOT REQUIRED when someone is being mentioned in a will, and I think you may have dodged a bullet.<\/p>\n
Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DEAR ABBY: My older brother, age 70, is making his estate plans with his partner. We have no…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[28,147,530],"class_list":{"0":"post-406713","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-personal-finance","10":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}