My Mom Is ‘Death Cleaning.’ What She Decided To Leave Me Was a Surprise.

More than 1,700 readers had something to say after I wrote about the "Great Stuff Transfer"—the furniture, dishes, and everything else that will accompany trillions of dollars in wealth as older Americans pass their legacies on to younger generations.Some scoffed at heirs complaining about clearing out a home with hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity, and amounted it to "dismantling and erasing" a life. Others described spending months trying to sell or even give away possessions, with one reader suggesting proactively getting rid of possessions before you die is “one of the kindest things you can do for your heirs.”What surprised me was how quickly a story about the cost of dealing with all that stuff turned into a fight over what, exactly, constitutes the inheritance: Is it the home and money an heir ultimately receives? The objects a parent spent a lifetime acquiring? Or the memories attached to them?My mom, it turns out, has been thinking about those questions for years. "I don't want you to be burdened by any of that," she told me when I asked about the possessions she expects me to inherit. "I don't want you to keep anything that doesn't make your life happy."The not-so...