Navigating Loss: A Guide to Financial and Emotional Support for Grieving Families

When the shadow of loss falls upon a family, the journey of healing can be as complex financially as it is emotionally. We open up about this delicate topic in our latest conversation, where we navigate the intricacies of supporting a grieving parent like Chuck's mother, who found herself alone after her husband's passing. 

In our discussion, we discuss how to combine emotional support with the practicality of financial vigilance to provide a beacon of hope for those going through the grieving process. Our heartfelt dialogue offers empathy, advice, and strategic planning for families grappling with the aftermath of losing a loved one.
 
 We also cast a protective net over the often-overlooked aspects of financial organization and planning, which can be helpful in unforeseen times of a loved one’s death. By sharing our insights on creating a financial "playbook," utilizing tools like 1Password, and fostering clear communication among siblings, we aim to arm you with practical ideas.

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Transcript

Intro: 0:01

This is Life, love and Money with Dr Angela K Love, the podcast for couples who want to get a handle on their finances and strengthen their marriage at the same time. We take deep dives into the money challenge's most married couples face and get real about them, plus practical tips on how to ensure a rock-solid future for your money and your marriage Now, dr Angela K Love.

Angela Kaye Love: 0:31

Hello and welcome. I'm your host, Dr Angela K Love.

Phil Love: 0:35

And I'm Phil Love. Welcome to the Life, love and Money podcast. We're coming to you today from sunny and warm Texas, and anytime that you get a day that's in the 60s in February, I think it's a blessing, don't you? Oh yeah, we really appreciate everybody listening, and today we're going to start off with a question that Anne Scott, from a conference that she is speaking out from a gentleman named Chuck, and she's going to play the question now.

Angela Kaye Love: 1:04

Hi Chuck. What financial question or topic would you like us to discuss on our podcast? You have a story to share right Right With your question.

Chuck: 1:14

Yes, okay, my parents passed away, my dad passed away and mom kind of gave up and she needed to reach out and ask for help and she didn't. And it just made a real effect on my life and I just wish she would have came and asked for help instead of just letting things go.

Angela Kaye Love: 1:31

So you're wondering what you could have done differently, you and your siblings, to help her out in that situation once your father passed away and then she was living on her own.

Chuck: 1:41

Exactly.

Angela Kaye Love: 1:43

All right, we're going to answer that on our podcast. Thank you, you're welcome.

Phil Love: 1:45

So that's the questions, and there's probably several things to discuss here. Where do you want to start at, Ang?

Angela Kaye Love: 1:52

So let's start with the initial question that he posed, which is how he could help his mom after his dad passed away. Two things are going on here which I think are difficult. First, his mom is grieving over the loss of her husband, and in this situation they were married a real long time. And then the second issue is, as an adult child, you grieving the loss of a parent. Here you are grieving the loss of your parent, and then you see the parent that is still living and they're grieving the loss of their spouse, and so how can you help a spouse that's having a difficult time?

Phil Love: 2:25

It's difficult too, because when you have a loss of a family member through death, the last thing you want to be dealing with is property and accounts and money and stuff like that. However, that's just the fact of life, that those things need to be dealt with.

Angela Kaye Love: 2:43

Right. So from an emotional perspective, it's just to be an emotional support, be encouraging, be willing to be a listener. Let them talk about their grief. Don't have any sort of timetable of you should be over this or you keep talking about it. It's going to be something that they probably grieve about for a really long time. So just being that emotional support to encourage them to talk about their feelings.

Phil Love: 3:07

What else do you have?

Angela Kaye Love: 3:07

So the next thing is practical support and that would be helping with task, everyday task around the house, maybe coming over and helping mow the lawn, making sure that things are functioning properly appliances, that sort of thing. Along with those practical help is to offer to help with getting the finances in order, if they're not already in order, and that would be help create a budget. In this situation, if his dad was doing all of the budgeting and finances and so forth, it might take a little bit of time to get things in order if she wasn't aware of the different financial accounts and that sort of thing. So helping to get that organized and then also helping her create a budget and then complete any forms that go along with the death of a spouse, making sure that gets done, such as life insurance and transferring ownership of anything like a car or even the house, transferring the insurance into his mom's name, those sorts of things. Just getting someone into that logical space of we need to do these practical things can help them with their grief. They have a place to escape to and that's a great place is to do things that are practical to help them and it gives them a little bit of downtime on that emotional grief that they're experiencing.

Angela Kaye Love: 4:21

And then Chuck could also warn his mom about potential scams that are out there.

Angela Kaye Love: 4:26

Because senior citizens are the ones that experience the most scams, they're considered easy targets.

Angela Kaye Love: 4:33

It would be helpful if he kept an eye out for those different kinds of scams and then relay that to his mom and then just share with her some of the things she doesn't want to do when it comes to just her daily life, such as clicking on links in an email.

Angela Kaye Love: 4:45

If somebody calls and starts asking questions to just you need to talk to my son or you need to talk to my daughter, whoever is going to handle that and just making sure that she's not giving out any important information anything that has to do with our identity over the phone with anybody, because these scammers they like to call up or send emails and really scare a person An older person will typically panic and give out that information and before you know it, all of their money has gone. And then also monitoring financial accounts, and in order to do that you would have to be able to get access to those accounts to make sure that everything is running smoothly and there's no issues with any sort of fraud or anything like that, and then help your mom set up some long-term goals, if she doesn't have those already with her money and her finances, and maybe even some long-term dreams that she has something that she might want to do that can help her work through that grief that she's experiencing.

Phil Love: 5:39

Yeah, I like the idea of talk to my son or actually talk to my attorney.

Angela Kaye Love: 5:43

Yeah, that's a good one.

Phil Love: 5:44

That'll probably turn a lot of people away.

Angela Kaye Love: 5:46

Right.

Phil Love: 5:47

They're trying to scam and stuff. What are some other thoughts or ideas you have along this line?

Angela Kaye Love: 5:52

So another one is just provide companionship, visit, call, maybe find activities that you can do together.

Angela Kaye Love: 5:58

And his mom may be a little bit hesitant at first, but if you were to pick some things that you know she likes, or maybe pick some new things because of it's an activity that she used to do with her husband, which is Chuck's dad, that might bring up some memories that might cause some issues with the grief, or it could be helpful that she could go and experience and like, oh, we had so much fun doing this and it was a great day to just be able to relive something that your father really enjoyed.

Angela Kaye Love: 6:23

You can try to get her out and about and do some activities, maybe go grocery shopping as well, help her do some tasks that way, but get her out to go to the park or to go to the zoo or whatever type of activity that she likes to do, if she likes to go fishing or whatever it is. And then the next thing that you could do is just encourage self-care, and that would just be making sure that she's going to her doctor's appointment, her eye appointment, her dental appointment. Offer to go with her. If she doesn't have someone to go with, maybe drive her there and then go out to lunch with her and do that sort of thing with her and then maybe have her exercise or maybe just go for walks with her in the neighborhood and then also just make sure that she's eating and taking care of herself.

Phil Love: 7:06

Yeah, that's a lot of good practical ideas there to really help a grieving spouse.

Angela Kaye Love: 7:11

And then I have one last thing in regards to all the type of emotional support and task and that sort of thing is to respect their independence.

Angela Kaye Love: 7:19

So I think sometimes we want to start to treat our elderly parents like they can't take care of themselves anymore, especially if they lost their spouse and you're grieving at the same time and they're having a hard time taking care of things because they're going through that grief cycle.

Angela Kaye Love: 7:35

But you still need to treat them like the adult that they are. You need to be respectful and let them choose their routine, let them figure it out, but be there to be an emotional support while they're trying to figure out this new way of living, because everything that they've done up till now has been with their spouse and now all of a sudden they don't have that spouse and that's really changed their entire routine and it's going to take some time for them to figure that out. Figure out a new routine and get some new interest. My grandmother was really involved when she was older and after my grandfather passed away with friends where they played cards and canasta and different things like that, and so maybe help her find a group of friends that she can spend time crocheting together, doing some crafts or whatever type of activities that she likes to do.

Phil Love: 8:20

Okay, those are really good ideas. Hopefully she's plugged into a community or a church and there's a lot of support there that they could have for widow. Part of the reason why one of the functions that the body of Christ has- Right.

Angela Kaye Love: 8:32

I think our church has a group for those that are surviving spouses.

Phil Love: 8:36

Yeah, that's great things there that could really help out. Let's go back to the financial things that you mentioned and talk a little more about that. What are some things that Chuck could do that's going to help with various financial things that need to be done when you have a spouse that dies?

Angela Kaye Love: 8:51

I think the first thing is identifying any and all financial accounts. That would be retirement accounts, stocks, any sort of investment accounts, annuities.

Phil Love: 9:01

Checking accounts too.

Angela Kaye Love: 9:02

Savings accounts, any sort of bills, credit card bills, auto loan, mortgage insurance, auto insurance, life insurance she may have life insurance on her and he was paying for that. House insurance, homeowners insurance. Checking out property tax Even if your house is paid in full, you still have to make sure. When was the property tax paid? How much is it? When's the next time I have to pay it? It's usually around the first of the year, but it varies state to state, county to county and those types of things. Just figure out all of the accounts and make sure that you can access them. Typically, if you don't have access to them and you want to get access, you're going to have to provide a death certificate.

Phil Love: 9:43

And would you need also maybe a copy of a will or something like that to go with the death certificate?

Angela Kaye Love: 9:48

Generally, you would have to have a copy of a will for certain types of accounts.

Phil Love: 9:53

When it comes to financial accounts, you do have to have a will that shows that you were married and that you're the one that's supposed to take ownership of that If you had the account set up like as a joint tenants with right or survivorship, then that would basically automatically transfer the ownership to the surviving spouse without dealing with a will. You just kind of show the death certificate, I think.

Angela Kaye Love: 10:15

Yeah, that is if you wanted to get the spouse's name off the account, just to secure it further, so no one else comes in and tries to portray that they are the spouse that passed away In order to get your spouse's name off of the account. Without them there, you would have to have that death certificate.

Phil Love: 10:31

Okay, so what are some other things that should be done financially to help out the widow?

Angela Kaye Love: 10:37

Another task that needs to be done is to check for automatic payments, to look at the check in account and any credit card statements for past payments that are automatically coming out either on a monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual basis. Sometimes that can be streaming services, it can be subscriptions to websites or different types of things. It can include automatic payment for insurance, homeowners insurance, auto insurance. It can include house payment if you have a house payment or an auto payment. It can include a lot of different things, so I would look for those automatic payments that are coming out.

Phil Love: 11:15

There's probably some value in just looking at the normal expenses that come through their accounts. You know every month and knowing probably some of those are going to go away because the spouse has passed away so you don't have his expense of whatever. But getting an understanding of that might help them that if there's some big anomaly that comes up in the months following the death that they could figure out what that is and try to stop it.

Angela Kaye Love: 11:41

Absolutely. And then if he had debit card, credit card, any sort of card where you could use it to purchase anything, you would want to go ahead and have that shredded so that it doesn't get lost or stolen to ensure that your accounts are safe. That would be another task to do. You would want to locate the checkbooks, savings books. You would want to find the file where the money's been tracked, whether it's Excel or Quick-In or some sort of program or just on paper. You would want to locate that and start going through that and identifying how things were being paid if it wasn't already shared.

Phil Love: 12:15

What are some other ideas on the financial side?

Angela Kaye Love: 12:18

I think, updating the contact information for all the various accounts, making sure that people know who to contact, that they now know to contact your mom rather than your dad if that was the case. So contacting an insurance agent, financial planner, that sort of thing. Also, contacting the dental office, the vision office, where your eye is done, taking care of letting them know that he's passed away so that you don't get those reminders to make a new appointment, and any doctor's office that is not aware that he's passed away would also need to be notified.

Phil Love: 12:50

That may require some changes, like in your health insurance. If the spouse that passed away provided the health insurance through his job and he passes away, then there's going to be a need of trying to either obtain new health insurance or maybe through Cobra or something like that, of making sure that there's insurance that's available, or it might be a Medicare or Medicaid thing.

Angela Kaye Love: 13:11

Yeah, you would need to contact them and let them know. So it's notifying just anyone who would need to know that he's passed away.

Phil Love: 13:18

So let's assume that we're looking before you have the spouse that passes away. Is there some planning or some things that could be done then that would make this process easier.

Angela Kaye Love: 13:32

Yeah, and I think this applies to everyone who's married and both spouses are living. I think there's things that you can do now to make it easier for the surviving spouse, and that would be to have a secure place where you have all your passwords to all your accounts. A lot of us are hooked up through the internet digitally with our finances, and there's a great program that you can use to protect your passwords and to also share that so that both spouses have access to it and we use it. It's called One Password and we have the family version of that and you can have up to five family members that can use the One Password. I have a link on my website under the resources tab. It costs $59.85 annually before taxes, so I think it comes out to about $63.00.

Angela Kaye Love: 14:19

Like I said, that one is for a family account. It's less expensive if it's an individual, but I like it because you can access my passwords. I can access your passwords and it also allows you to do a virtual card, like if you are traveling or you want to use a virtual card for something and you want to make sure, if that gets stolen, that no one is going to be able to charge more than the amount. You can create a virtual card through there. You can also mask your email address through One Password, so it's pretty cool program. So that's one thing that you can do.

Angela Kaye Love: 14:48

The second thing is to make sure that the other spouse knows the login for your phone or has their face captured so they can get on your iPhone, because a lot of times, a lot of vital information whether it's having access to friends phone numbers and contact information, emails or other type of information that you need you really need to be able to have access to your spouse's phone.

Angela Kaye Love: 15:13

So that's another thing that you can do now to make life easier for the surviving spouse. The next thing that I recommend is talking to an attorney about creating a trust. There are lots of different types of trust. You can seek help of an attorney. I don't recommend going to a website like legalformscom or something like that, and the reason is because trusts do different things. The different types of trusts do different things, and you don't want to sign up for the wrong trust and then have a spouse pass away and that trust doesn't do what you had hoped that it would do. I would go ahead and meet with an attorney and pay the money to be able to protect your assets and your money and that sort of thing.

Phil Love: 15:54

Even if they don't do a trust. Just a will would be pretty simple too for an attorney, but you probably have somebody that's really well versed in estate planning that could ask the right questions, and that's probably part of the problem normal folk have is you just don't know what are the right questions and issues to deal with, and having a professional help you is definitely going to help.

Angela Kaye Love: 16:16

And depending on where you live, it changes what type of documentation that you have to have if a spouse passes away to avoid going into probate court. I've heard some stories in certain states and counties where couples had a will but that didn't keep them out of probate when one of the spouses passed away. So that would be the type of things you would want to research or talk to an attorney about what happens if my spouse passes away. What do I need to avoid things like probate and what do I need in order to be able to access the accounts of my spouse?

Phil Love: 16:48

Maybe a good idea. Also talk to your accountant, if you have one of those, you know, as you're talking to your attorney as well.

Angela Kaye Love: 16:54

Absolutely.

Phil Love: 16:56

So this one password account. Could you create different documents and store it in one password, Say if you had the will or you had kind of a list of these or accounts and stuff like that that you need to be aware of if something happens to me?

Angela Kaye Love: 17:09

That's a great question that I don't know the answer to. Do you know the answer to that?

Phil Love: 17:13

I don't.

Angela Kaye Love: 17:13

That's a great question.

Phil Love: 17:15

But I think that somewhere there needs to be place or kind of like almost like a playbook that you would have that would deal with the different things for accounts, insurances, stuff like that.

Angela Kaye Love: 17:26

I think that's a great idea.

Phil Love: 17:27

So if something were to happen, that information is there and then that thing needs to be updated Absolutely Because things change, and I think a good time to update it would be around tax time, when you're doing your taxes, and that's assuming that you've had no other major life event, like you haven't moved or bought a new place or something like that. But that may be a real good time to just do a quick update on that and to make sure that everybody's aware. And then, as couples get older and they may want to bring in some of their kids to help work through all this stuff, or they may have attorney or something like that that they trust that would act as an executor to make sure things are done right.

Angela Kaye Love: 18:06

I think it's a great idea. Like in our situation, I take care of certain accounts and you take certain care of other accounts. For example, you take care of our auto and farm insurance everything that has to do with any sort of insurance and you work directly with the agents that we have that provide those services for us. And I don't know that information. I don't know. I mean, I know who we have our insurance through, but I don't know the name of the agent or the contact information. And having a playbook where I could go to that and access that contact information if I needed to contact them If something happened to you, would be very helpful and would take away a lot of frustration when it comes to managing the finances.

Angela Kaye Love: 18:45

And then there's accounts that I have access to that you don't have access to and the only way you'd be able to access that is through the OnePassword program or if I had it written down, and having it written down if you have it on a piece of paper you might lose that, and if you have it on your computer, if someone hacks into your computer now all of a sudden they have access to your document, or if your computer crashes and you didn't have a backup for your computer. Now you've lost that valuable information and we have some things financial stuff in our say, but I also use iCloud and I put a lot of my documents in there that I want to be able to access from anywhere. So if my computer crashes, I can access that. But that's not always when it comes to financial information. That's not secure. So you really want to have a place where your financial information is secure and free from hackers.

Phil Love: 19:35

Yep, that would make sense, makes a lot of sense on that. And I remember back when my dad passed away, because when mom passed away dad was still alive, so he took care of most of the stuff financially with mom. But when dad passed away he's just my brother and I and we get along pretty good. So we pretty much divided up the task of who's doing what. He took dealing with the bank accounts, I took dealing with the stocks and we just dealt with all that stuff that we needed to and shared the stuff and kept each other abreast of it. But we even had little surprises here and there, like we didn't know about some additional benefits that he qualified for since he's a veteran Terms of additional insurance and stuff with his burial, with designating those things.

Phil Love: 20:19

And I think that's something to consider too is how well you work with your other spouses or the other siblings Not spouses but siblings Because if there's a lot of infighting in the siblings and you've got one of them, that's really money hungry or something like that. That presents a whole new wrinkle in working through all this stuff.

Angela Kaye Love: 20:37

And a lot of these points that we've made just now talking about spouses who are still both living and setting it up, that each spouse knows the account numbers and knows how to access the information and who to contact for certain things. That's really great, but you can also help your adult parents who are still living and they haven't done these things. You can help them get organized and make sure that you're able to access that information or someone in the family either your mom or the dad or both that you have that information somewhere, and it'll make it easier for the surviving spouse.

Phil Love: 21:10

I think that there is a whole new wrinkle you bring in as a couple. You have a business or investments, rental property, a farm, anything like that, Because now you've got not only what do you have to do personally, but what do you have to do to continue the business and operation Like if you had stuff with payroll or bills or employees. That's what I think a lot of people do. That's what personal, affordable housing is. Stuff like that that you had to deal with key accounts of key suppliers. That's probably a good idea that there needs to be some sort of planning done on the business side so that if you have a small business and you're in control of it, if something were to happen to you, that things can go smoothly in the transition to whoever's picking up those roles.

Angela Kaye Love: 21:50

You're going to have a much bigger playbook if you have businesses involved Actuality, I think you would just need to have a playbook for each business.

Phil Love: 21:57

Yep, I think you're probably right. Some of them may be real simple. I mean, it might be. Maybe I have a little LLC over here that just has a rental property with four people in it. You know four families, and then you're just dealing with okay, now instead of sending the checks to me, we're going to send them to you, or something like that, and then who are the key people you deal with Maintenance and insurance and stuff like that on the property. And then others might be a lot more complex. I think you're right. You need really the what happens if I get hit by a bus book.

Angela Kaye Love: 22:28

Playbook for each one of those what happens if I get hit by a bus book. That's really good, yeah, and if you have the different businesses, you would have one for each business. And then also making sure that each spouse has access to the accounts or knows where to go to get access to those accounts.

Phil Love: 22:42

We dealt with this a little bit different places where, since I've been in banking my whole career, when loan files, that, since I've been the lending side is make sure that you have information in the loan file. So if you got hit by the bus and somebody else had to pick that up, that they would know what they need to do, who to contact, what information is needed, and they could just carry on.

Angela Kaye Love: 23:03

Right when the accounts are held, the checking, all the business accounts, the checking the savings, the loan if there's any loans, all of that and then the contact those institutions to get the ownership changed over, if it's not already, for both spouses.

Phil Love: 23:18

I really think that if a lot of that stuff could be done ahead of time on the financial part, then if you have the unfortunate you have a death, at least that has its own playbook that can work automatically. You can deal more with the grieving and other issues.

Angela Kaye Love: 23:35

Absolutely. I mean, you do need time to go through that grieving process and even though we all know that there's a time for everything, we all know that God has a certain time scheduled for us when we're going to go be with Him, we're going to pass away, to go have it be an eternity with Him. It does make it easier if you are organized and you have your finances in order and then you can take that time to focus on your family and going through that grieving process.

Phil Love: 24:01

Yeah, and I think the most important thing that we can emphasize is life here is short and eternity is really really, really long, so the most important thing you can do even though this stuff's important with dealing with planning and everything else like that is to make sure that you've repented and trusted Christ as your Savior, because that will prepare you for eternity. Any other final thoughts?

Angela Kaye Love: 24:23

Not that I can think of. Just make sure you're being intentional about your finances. You might think that you have all the time in the world, but a lot of times God takes us quickly. Make sure everybody's on the same page. Get those playbooks created.

Phil Love: 24:37

Well, thank you all for listening to this episode of the Life Loving Money Podcast. Ange, why don't you tell the fine folks out there how they can hear about new episodes?

Angela Kaye Love: 24:46

Well, you can just go ahead and click subscribe on the Life, Love and Money Podcast and then you'll be notified when a new podcast drops. Or you can go to my website, AngelaKLovecom that's AngelaKAYELovecom and click on the podcast link in the upper right hand corner of the website. You will see the latest podcast episode on that page.

Phil Love: 25:08

Thank you all.