X-Message-Number: 14052
From: 
Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2000 19:24:16 EDT
Subject: "Grimdeth" questions

My brief answers to the posted questions are as follows:

1. Funds for use after revival

First, CI's only purpose is the welfare of its patients and future patients. 
The successive boards of directors--all of them prospective patients and many 
with friends or relatives already patients--will always base their decisions 
on this criterion.

Hence a member might well decide--as I and others have decided--that our best 
bet is just to give CI any funds we have available at death, no strings 
attached. Any other strategy represents either an attempt by the member to 
outguess the future, or else a decision to give control to some other party 
or parties, such as the trustees of a trust. 

"Grimdeth" wrote

> it is prudent to assume that no  institution will give you any money unless 
they are absolutely required to do  so.

Do you imagine that CI (or Alcor or ACS) will act in the best interests of 
its patients only if legally compelled to do so, and unable to find any 
loophole in the laws, and otherwise will use the money for perhaps some 
"selfish" purpose? 

As for personal peculation, the structure of the organization does not allow 
the officers or directors to extract some private benefit from the financial 
success of the organization. No officer or director of CI is paid, and access 
to funds is carefully controlled. 

Second, after a patient's revival, the funds previously needed to keep him in 
storage will be freed up, and any excess after cost of revival and 
rehabilitation could be given to the patient, if the CI directors so decide.

Third, although no detailed predictions about the future can be made with 
confidence, there is good reason to believe that CI's financial resources, in 
both relative and absolute terms, will increase over time, while relative 
costs (of just about everything) will decline. Hence CI should eventually be 
able to meet almost any financial needs of its patients.

Fourth, if a member does want to arrange a separate trust for his exclusive 
use after revival, that can be done in a jurisdiction, such as Delaware, that 
does not have the Rule Against Perpetuities (although no one can guarantee 
that the laws won't change); and we can name an unaffiliated law firm with 
experience in that area. 

2. Location

There is an advantage to living near the main facility of your cryonics 
organization, but that advantage is much more limited than one might think. 
If you move from New York to California, you will then be closer to Alcor in 
Arizona than to CI in Michigan. But the time required to get a traveling team 
from Arizona to California will almost certainly be much longer than the time 
needed for a previously trained and equipped local funeral director to reach 
you. (In a recent reported case, as I recall, Alcor's team required 38 hours 
to reach a patient in the Chicago area.) Of course, if you believe the 
traveling team (now and in the future, after all the changes that are rapidly 
occurring) will give you a preferable service, you will factor that in. 

In any event, if you want to join CI on a possibly temporary basis, our 
Option Two program allows that at negligible cost.

As for the tax impact of moving from one organization to another, there will 
ordinarily not be any, as far as I know, with CI or Alcor, because we do not 
hold members' money in trust. With ACS there can be trusts involved, and you 
could ask them.  
 
3. Archives
 
CI will allow a drawer in a filing cabinet--or perhaps more by prior 
arrangement--for patients' archival material. As for perishability of that 
material, that will be just one of the responsibilities of management.
 
Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org 

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