Getting financial affairs in order before you die

[blackheartsgirl]

my mum died on Wednesday just gone and the circumstances of her death was traumatic enough (she was ill but it was quite sudden, police and coroner involved) but sorting out her financial affairs is almost as bad.

she refused to talk about money or wills, was secretive, lied to her partner, was evasive, really crap with money. My brother and me have no idea whether she has a will, has any money at all, whether she had a works pension, any debts, we can’t find much paperwork, all bank statements were on line, no passwords nothing, she was a bit of a spendaholic . We are going to have a right old job as I think it might go to probate.also no funeral provision.

thus has made me really think about my own affairs and making things easy for my kids when I go, I don’t have much money but I do have some assets that can be sold. I was thinking of a will, a funeral plan, and details of work pensions etc. what else?

Sorry for the depressing subject but I’m wide awake and things are churning in my head

I work in this area (to a degree).

1. Write a will, ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVE KIDS. Make sure if they are not to reside with their other biological parent on your death you write a letter of wishes explaining why.

1. Make sure your pension and death in service nominees are up to date.

1. Make sure any life insurance you have is written in trust.

1. Put all docs (Wills/Power of attorney) along with a regularly updated list of mortgage/bank providers with it and let your family know where you keep the information.

Please pre pay your funeral as you can state what you want, cremation or burial, you can plan every last detail. Please do not leave your children to sort out the details, they may have very different ideas and that will cause tension at a time they are grieving.

This is all so helpful

In the name of making things easier for your loved ones, power of attorney is also a good thing to set up. If you lose mental capacity (this could be slow like with dementia or sudden like a brain injury from a car crash), power of attorney gives someone the legal authority to manage things on your behalf. There's two types one for money and property and one for health and welfare. If you lose mental capacity without this in place, your family probably have to go through a very long drawn out and expensive process of getting deputyship. This is usually in really stressful and emotionally difficult situations like someone going into care or needing support from social services. Deputyship is an added burden both emotionally and financially that your loved ones absolutely do not need. Hopefully you will never need to use power of attorney but if it's in place and is needed, it makes life so much easier for everyone.
This is obviously not related to someone dying but makes traumatic difficult times so much easier.

Oh good point!

My dad died in May unexpectedly (he was in his 50's) and although he was in a rented property etc he had kept letters relating to his pensions so we were able to make contact with them. One pension specifically said on the letter 'half to son and half to daughter upon death'. Funeral costs were paid from money in his bank account (we had to go into the bank as didn't know any passwords etc) and then some of the pension fund. Made it slightly easier. It has made my mum think about how she could make it easier for us too and also made myself consider for my own daughter. Hope you are ok, it's really stressful and sad 

Should you be using passwords of dead people though to get into their account, as long as you know the bank you don't need to know the separate accounts and the bank will just close the lot. There are laws for who can access accounts and also a computer misuse act. Best to have a list, not online of everything, though nowadays that will change a lot because people change subscriptions, utilities and banks a lot

Yes unfortunately.
The has been documented abuse both physically and psychologically at the hands of him and involvement with social services. They also have a further 8 children between them living in a 3 bed house and the house itself is awful.

he really isn’t the best person to have looking after his own dc.

If you have an iPhone you can set something up so a named person has access to it.

So sorry for your loss. Its a bit of a morbid subject but personally I'm going to have it written in my will. Write a list of bank accounts etc for my sons so they don't have any additional worries. I've even chosen the music for my funeral. Again sorry for your loss x

My mum had a will but we still had to go to probate as many do if your estate isn't a few thousand only.

We had to pay out circa £6000 from our own money for the funeral etc. Friends in the police told my sister it's not uncommon for family to withdraw some cash via atm before they inform the bank but we didn't do that.

Ideally I'd have some way for the kids to not have to be out of pocket for the funeral.

Sealed envelope with the banking info etc on where the kids know it is. Mum never told us either.

The limit for having to go through probate if you have Premium Bonds is very low, £5k, most banks are higher limit

Ideally I'd have some way for the kids to not have to be out of pocket for the funeral

My late dad opened an account in my name into which he put money for his funeral expenses and bills that might need to be paid immediately upon his death. He topped it up over the years.

He died unexpectedly so I very much appreciated his thoughtfulness.

In fact this thread has prompted me to set up something similar now DD is at university.

Surely you can't stop a father taking care of his own children!

But you're right, the "guardian" part of any will is not compulsory, you can't force someone to take your kids.

Also when you don't like your family!

Or, your parents are still alive, they're well off, you're single with no kids and there's zero point your money going to them.

There's millions of scenarios. Both the above applied to me when I wrote my current will.

I have an envelope marked 'if I die' and inside it simply says call this number, ask for x and explain I've died'.

The number is my solicitor.
They have my will, but once a year I send them an updated file with every single asset, investment and liability detailed so that all the bits and bobs are in in order and easy to administer.

Done it ever since my eldest turned 18. Sounds morbid but imagine being that young and having to sort everything as my next of kin, that would be so unfair.

But having everything written down or on a digital file would be an incredible risk if I got burgled. So this seems the easiest way.

No-one has asked for my mum's passwords, of course.

It was just useful knowing them so I could get a snapshot of her accounts before they all got closed. I also did her banking for her while she was ill (I did have POA).

Just the name, address, date of birth plus bank account details is enough. My "dying tidily list" includes the institutions and the account numbers. Plus an indication of the balance which I update annually.

This is really helpful, thanks for highlighting all this. And sorry for your loss OP

I took £250 from mum's account a couple of days before she died, for incidentals. But I did have POA. I didn't touch the account after she died other than to go in and take a note of all the accounts and their balances (before they wiped it all) so I could start to think about IHT etc.

You don't need to pay the funeral yourself, the bank will raise a cheque for you if you give them the invoice. It was quite painful, ended up calling twice and going to the branch three times because they didn't know what they were doing, but I got it two days before the funeral.

Of course, the other option is to pre pay and make sure someone knows you have. You're also avoiding inflation that way.

But surely by (at least) 13, you can't force them to live with their father unless they want to, which sounds unlikely.

Hopefully it's never going to come up but if it did, there's probably other relatives who they could live with who are in a better position both mentally and financially.

Another reason to have a will - if you are older than your spouse and die at same time, the money will all go to his family as the rules deem the oldest person to die first. When I realised my SIL would get everything I made a will pdq.

My df died without making a will. It took my mum 18 months to sort out his affairs. He didn't bother with filing and she had to wait a year for the annual statements to come in to even know where he had accounts. Thankfully he didn't do online or she'd still be sorting it out now. It was an administrative hassle when she didn't need it.

When I had a cancer diagnosis and was facing surgery, the first thing I did was make a will, arrange guardianship of ds, ensure that all the nominated NOK were up to date on my pension accounts. Made a list for my dsis (executor) of my accounts & passwords - mortgage, bank, savings, social media, email.

Wrote out instructions for a funeral. A letter to ds. It felt like the least I should do. Try to make the whole grim process as straightforward as possible. Thankfully none of it has proved necessary, but it's all still in place, should I get run over by a bus.

I don't think it's morbid. It's just common sense.

@blackheartsgirl If the child's father is named on the birth certificate, he will automatically get custody unless he refuses it.

My ex is equally hopeless and his new woman is an ignorant and selfish woman, whom ds dislikes. My approach to this problem was to arrange for ds to be cared for by my sister and my niece (38yo) in the event that his df did not accept custody.

But then I worded my will so DS would inherit from my estate aged 25 (except for paying for university/further education). Until he was that age, maintenance would only be paid to my dsis/niece. That meant my ex couldn't use ds as a revenue stream which he or his new woman would do, given the opportunity. Ex is not a poor man so he wouldn't need the money.

Thankfully my ds is now old enough to make his own decisions. He knows he would have the choice of where to live, and that dsis/dniece would welcome him with open arms. He is close to both. It is the best I can do to ensure he is happy and cared for.

I dunno, at 13 I didn't want to live with my parents but I'm sure that not doing so wasn't an option.

You're thinking of divorce, where the kids get a choice. On death, they don't. Though I expect social services would get involved if there was an issue these days.

What even if the father is abusive towards them! Would social services actually grant him custody knowing that the police and themselves know he was physically and mentally abusive towards them. Social services even said there were to be no overnight contact at all due to the abuse. My girls hate him, dd13 said she would kill herself rather than be forced to live with him. Jesus.
Would they really put another 2 vulnerable children in a property where there was 10 people already living there and only 3 bedrooms?