$10,000 to my Gay Men’s Chorus, and the rest to my partner.
There are times when I think they’d be inheriting my debts, rather than an estate.
Setting up a Mr. Goob museum / library crossed my mind.
I’m single. My brother gets any cool stuff that was our parents that he chooses. I’m fond of my niece but she has always lived out of state and we are not super close, she gets a chunk.
There are children of several of my friends I’ve watched grow up and are near and dear to me. They have no idea that they may get a surprise if I don’t outlive my money. I plan die trying…
Be careful not to leave them too much: your greedy kids might still get some of it.
People giving lots of money to their kids (or people of their generation) when they die seems a little silly, at least as it is normally done. I mean, assuming your parents kick the bucket about 1 generation (20-30 years) before you do, you are most likely to already have a job and hopefully a well-funded retirement account, because you certainly don’t want to count on getting an inheritance to be able to retire. Probably nearing retirement yourself. So yay, you can go on a cruise or something, but you can’t really put the money to the best use, and a lot of it probably ends up in your estate when you die. On the other hand, if you get the windfall when you’re just starting your adult life, you can actually do something useful with it: buy a house, start a business, whatever (or squander it, which probably happens, but I figure better to do that when you’re young and have time to recover). I figure I’d leave my money to my grandkids, if I have any.
That’s fine, if I have no heirs, it won’t matter
After my firstborn son died but but before I got married, I always put my favorite niece (not incidentally my son’s best friend) down as my beneficiary for life insurance and as payable-on-death for my bank accounts.
Read the thread title. “You have no kids…”
One of the great things about dying is that I will not have to give another flying fig about any worldly problem ever again. Don’t care what happens to my estate. My relatives can pick over it like vultures. I bet they will.
You won’t care then. But this is a decision you could make now. Do you care about any worldly problem now?
Assuming that I win the lottery and thus have anything worthwhile to leave, 40% goes to my parents (if they are still living), and the remainder is divided equally between my eight siblings, though they are not all living. The children of a deceased sibling count as a sibling, and that share is divided equally among them.
The few heirloom items I have are split between my first sister and only surviving brother, depending on which side of the family they came from.
I have a will (I need a new one) that gives money to various educational charities, with 20% to my ex-college girlfriend as executor.
She also gets my books, collectables & art.
I would likely bequeath any petty possessions I leave behind to my sister or her children.
Even if you take the “I’m dead; It don’t matter to me” attitude, spare a moment’s thought for whatever next of kin you may have, however distant. They’ll get called by the authorities to clean up the mess, sell the worldly goods, file the court papers, etc. The least you can do is pay them something for their trouble. Especially since it’s not costing you anything at that point.
If you truly have nobody, then the state will end up cleaning up the mess, both physical and administrative. At which point having your assets go to the taxpayer seems only fair.
No, I understand. I think my point is largely true for everyone mentioning nieces and nephews too. When you’re young-middle aged (as it sounds like many in this thread are), it can make sense to give it to your brother’s kid. When you make it to 60, I’m sure the nephew would appreciate it, but it’d probably have a greater impact going to his kids.
Like a surprising number of persons here, we have no kids and are planning for that to continue. Predicating this (again like many here) on my not dying until I’ve managed to accumulate some decent assets …
If I die before my SO, she gets everything. If she wants to give some money out in my honor that’s all the better, but I’m not worried about it.
Otherwise divide it evenly among my nieces and nephews, unless some of them turn out rotten — it’s still too early to tell. 
Maybe some money to the local house rabbit rescue, a bit to support women in IT … it would probably be responsible to think that through I suppose.
What do you mean, “women in IT”?
I hope to eventually have kids, but don’t have any yet. Until then, my mother and sister are presumably my next of kin, and after them, my sister’s three kids.
Once I do get to the point of writing an actual will, though, I intend to put some towards a scholarship fund at my high school.
When I’m 60 my nephew will be 20, so it still works to leave it to him. Not to mention I have a 21 year old brother who is getting married this year. Depending on when they have kids I could have nieces and nephews that are minors when I’m 60.
Women in. Information technology careers. It remains an absurdly male dominated field, a fact which has bothered me for a while.
Actually, the next of kin don’t have to. If I got a call that some distant cousin has an insolvent estate that needs cleaning up, I would pass.
My wife and I have no children. Half of our estate will go to our two nieces, and the other half to various charities we’ve chosen (mostly Humane Society types).