As a change to my usual finance topics, here’s a series on bereavement, focusing on managing the finances. My wife died about six months ago after a couple of years of terminal illness, which gave us plenty of time to get the finances straight. As usual on this website, I’m describing what we did and what seemed to work well for us, and it won’t all suit people in different situations.
At one point after my wife’s prognosis, I did a short free online course with the Open University about Death, Dying and Grief. It highlighted what makes a “good death”:
- awareness and acceptance of dying (viewed as a positive)
- preparedness (getting one’s affairs in order)
- comfort (minimisation of pain)
- closure (addressing and resolving difficult issues)
- peacefulness and dignity
- presence of family and being in familiar home (or ‘home-like’) surroundings
- personhood (a sense that an individual’s wishes and preferences have been accounted for)
- timeliness (dying at an older age; and a dying process that is predictable, with an identifiable start and end point).
Whilst my wife’s death was far from “good” from a timeliness point of view, getting the finances in order helped with preparedness, closure and personhood.
Our mirror wills have always left our estate to each other, or in the event of us both dying we would have left our estates to our children. That makes things simple from legal and tax angles. We didn’t require that trusts were set up, and my new will doesn’t call for trusts either: my estate would have to be massively more valuable before I’d consider trusts. I compiled some of the “what to do” lists from the websites of banks, building societies, pension providers and funeral directors. I resequenced the list and edited parts to suit myself so what you see in the “bereavement” pages is a blend of their text and mine.
