When friends become executors
David Staehlin, 62, never married and had no children. “I’ve just been happy to be single,” he said. He made his first will when he joined the Navy in 1986, leaving everything to his parents. A lot had changed when he updated his will last June.
Since 1996, Mr. Staehlin outside of St. Paul, Minn., far from his mother and five siblings, who live in Nebraska, Missouri, and Colorado. “I love my family and have no complaints against them,” he said. But, he said, he’s not very involved in their lives, given the distance.
Mr. Staehlin plans to leave $10,000 to each of his siblings and his mother. He also allocated 75 percent of his 401(k) plan to his local Veterans of Foreign Wars outpost, where he volunteers several times a week.
Everything else goes to his two best friends, whom he calls “my Minnesota family.” Mr. Staehlin met Adam Ford in 2004 when Mr. Ford joined the volunteer St. Paul Police Reserve, where Mr. Staehlin was a patrol commander. Soon Mr. Ford mr. Staehlin to his partner, Ryan Calvin.
Their friendship quickly deepened. Mr. Staehlin took care of Mr. Ford and Mr. Calvin’s dogs when they traveled. When the couple married, Mr. Staehlin was Mr. Ford’s best man. Mr. Staehlin once returned from vacation to find that the couple had rebuilt his back porch. They took Mr. Staehlin to San Diego to visit the USS Midway Museum to celebrate his retirement.
Mr. Ford, who is an only child, described Mr. Staehlin as more like a brother than a friend.
Mr. Staehlin first asked Mr. Ford and Mr. Calvin to serve as his primary and secondary health care agents, as his authorized agents, and as his executors, and they agreed. The pair already had an idea of responsibilities: Mr. Calvin, 47, has a law degree, and Mr. Ford, 46, helped his mother when she had to execute her father’s and husband’s estates when they died within months of each other.
