Terry's TMG Tips

A Customized Will Tag

This page updated 13 Oct 2005

Version note: Applies to 6 & 7

The standard Will tag in TMG will readily record the fact that a person wrote a will, and will allow you to enter whatever information you chose about the will as well. But I find that I like to have the fact that others are mentioned in the will appear in their own record as well. One could make a separate tag for each such person, but I find a modified Will tag, with each person involved assigned a Role, does all this more easily.

Here is how I modified the standard Will Tag to accomplish this. Note that the entities after the first two are custom Roles:

Principal Sentence:	[P] left a will < dated [D]> <[L]><, [M]>
Witness Sentence:	[W] was a witness to the will of [P]< dated [D]> <[L]><[WM]><[M0]>
Sentence for Role "Heir:"	[W] was named an heir in the will of [P]< dated [D]> <[L]><[WM]><[M0]>
Sentence for Role "Executor:"	[W] was named an executor in the will of [P]< dated [D]> <[L]><[WM]><[M0]>
Female Sentence:	[W] was named an executrix in the will of [P]< dated [D]> <[L]><[WM]><[M0]>
Sentence for Role "Heir & Executor:"	[W] was named executor and an heir in the will of [P]< dated [D]> <[L]><[WM]><[M0]>
Female Sentence:	[W] was named an executrix and an heir in the will of [P]< dated [D]> <[L]><[WM]><[M0]>
Sentence for Role "Mentioned:"	[W] was mentioned in the will of [P]< dated [D]> <[L]><[WM]><[M0]>
Use:	Enter the Testator (the one who wrote the will) as the Principal.. Enter the date signed in the date field. I enter a summary of the terms, including the heirs and all, in the Memo. That way it prints nicely in the Principal's reports (You could construct a sentence using the Role names to avoid entering those names in the Memo as I illustrate in my Roles Tutorial article - but it's difficult to make it read well that way.) You could put the probate info here, but I prefer using a separate tag for that, thereby "bracketing" the death date with entries in the person view. For each person mentioned in the will that you want to record in their own narratives, add that person as a Witness using the appropriate Role. If you want to record any details to be included in the narratives for the these persons, such as what the heirs were to inherit, enter it in the Witness Memo for each of them.
Notes:	The term <[M0]> in all the witness roles is "M-zero" – it's purpose is to suppress the memo, in case you have the memo options turned on in the report definition. If you are not familiar with the use of Roles, the discussion in my Roles Tutorial article may help. Note that the will tag described in that article in not entirely the same as the one here. While I used a more elaborate sentence for the Principal in that article for purposes of explaining the use of role variables, I don't actually use that form in my own data as I find it needs to be unnecessarily complex to work successfully in a variety of real circumstances. For help with creating the sentence templates involved, see my article on Modifying Sentence Templates.

Enhancing the Will Tag

The Will Tag described above works fine, and I used it for several years. But I've recently added some enhancements that readers may want to consider.

The Will Tag as I have defined it requires the user to type into the Memo field any description of the contents of the will that is to be included in the output. In the form described above, when that description includes the names of executors, heirs, etc., those name must be typed into the memo. That works fine, but has three disadvantages. It invites errors in typing, the names are not updated should you later change the way you entered the referenced persons' names, and the names do not appear as links if you output to Second Site.

All those issues are solved by entering the names as variables referring to the Witnesses entered in the tag, rather than typing them in. But, in practice, I find that you often don't want to refer to all the heirs, say, as a group, but want to mention them separately. You can't do that when all the heirs are assigned a common Role. So I've enhanced my Will Tag by adding additional Roles to permit referring to individual or smaller groups of persons who had the same role:

Sentence for Role "Heir1:"	[W] was named an heir in the will of [P]< dated [D]> <[L]><[WM]><[M0]>
Sentence for Role "Heir2:"	[W] was named an heir in the will of [P]< dated [D]> <[L]><[WM]><[M0]>
Sentence for Role "Executor1:"	[W] was named an executor in the will of [P]< dated [D]> <[L]><[WM]><[M0]>
Female Sentence:	[W] was named an executrix in the will of [P]< dated [D]> <[L]><[WM]><[M0]>

Note that they differ only in the name of the Role, by adding the number 1, 2, etc. The Sentences are the same. Of course, more variations of each Role can be added if needed to further separate the various participants.

An example may help explain the usage. Say I wanted to create the following description of the terms of a will:

...naming his brother Matthew and son-in-law Rubin B. O'Hara as executors. He named his eight children, leaving his daughters, Mary Ann, Margaret Aurelia, Helen Minerva and Larin Elvira, each a personal item, such as a horse and silver, and his sons, Mathew Skinner, Giles James, Chittenden Patton, and Thompson Archer, a sword, watch, or $100 toward their education.

I would enter the following in the Memo field to generate that text:

naming his brother [RF:Executor] and son-in-law [R:Executor1] as executors. He named his eight children, leaving his daughters, [RG:Heir], each a personal item, such as a horse and silver, and his sons, [RG:Heir1], a sword, watch, or $100 toward their education

In this example, brother Matthew was assigned the Role "Executor" and son-in-law Rubin the Role of "Executor1" All the daughters are assigned the Role of "Heir" while the sons are assigned to "Heir1." Obviously, use of this method requires some thought about how the memo for the Principal will be crafted as the Roles are assigned to the other participants. Note that I've used different forms to of the Role variables to produce first name only for the brother, full name for the son-in-law, and given names only for the children.

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