We moved some bills and utility contact details into the spouse’s name, but we could have done more. After years of my wife managing the utility bills, it was tough to remove too much from her account. As an alternative, we made my wife’s account joint. (Making the account joint has other advantages – practical advantages when the ill person is struggling mentally from time to time, and also meant that finances could be managed seamlessly at death. Just beware that half of the joint account value forms part of the estate, but then if it’s left to a spouse it is exempt from IHT anyway.)
If you want to, a terminally ill person can cash in SIPP pensions tax free early BUT it might be more tax efficient (income tax and IHT) to only do this when the money is wanted. Some final salary schemes still pay survivor benefits even after the deceased has taken a terminal-illness-lump sum. SIPPs have no such benefit once cashed in. In our case, getting the terminal lump sum from my wife’s final salary scheme was right to do, but she could have left her SIPP in place longer and accessed it only when necessary. With my deceased wife being under 75, any SIPPs passed to me tax-free and in effect have the tax advantages of an ISA while also being outside of my estate.
It is still OK to input money to a SIPP after taking a tax-free terminally-ill withdrawal, but there is a maximum annual input amount for non-earners. Contributing to a SIPP within the two years before death will mean having to do the full IHT forms.
It may be fraudulent to access and modify online accounts after the person’s death, so we tried to set things up so that this wasn’t necessary.
We had always had separate bank accounts, and we made my wife’s account a joint account. I wish in hindsight that at this stage I’d had a conversation with the bank about how easy it would be to get an “Executor Account”. Only certain banks do it (mine didn’t) and it meant that a couple of cheques made out to “the executors of…” had to wait until I had Grant of Probate to prove to the cheque issuer that they should cancel them and make them out to me.
Many married couples already have Joint mortgage and joint house ownership. This made things very easy for us.
THE FOLLOWING CAN BE DONE ONCE YOU THINK A FINAL TERMINAL DECLINE HAS STARTED:
Assuming you can see what looks like a final terminal decline, and medical complications piling up, this may be the time to do a few things.
Do you want Facebook to be deleted or to be memorialised? Consider setting the Legacy settings. Once the person has died you can still make this decision, and you might prefer that this is a decision for the survivors rather than the deceased.
Are there photos etc. on the cloud that will be inaccessible after death?
Find a Funeral director, consider how you want the ceremony to go, and pick 3 pieces of music. As it turned out, I did this about a month before the death and it gave me time to think about pieces of music and the wake venue: the availability of the wake venue was good to know before picking a funeral time.
Make a list of people to invite to the funeral, including contact details which might be on the terminally-ill person’s phone. Is there anything particular to include or exclude from the eulogy.
