Just Lost Your Spouse? What to Do?

One of the hardest situations anyone faces in life is the loss of a loved one, and when that loved one is a spouse, it can leave you baffled beyond just your emotions. Unfortunately, the financial chaos that ensues can be just as overwhelming as the emotional void when you’ve just lost your spouse. That’s why preparing for the inevitable helps you heal faster, at least when it comes to the financial burdens you face.

1. Stop and allow yourself time to grieve

Death is not just emotionally draining, but physically and financially as well. Allow yourself time to grieve. Your emotions will be all over the place. You’ve just lost your life’s mate and quick decisions are the enemy. Processing each emotion is critical to making shrewd financial decisions, especially in such a heartbreaking time as this. Far too often, people make snap judgments on how to handle financial issues after a death because their judgment is so clouded. Definitely, allow time to go through all the stages of grief.

2. Prepare for a new financial future

What’s next in life for you? It’s time to begin thinking about how you’ll live your life solo now. Assess your goals. Do you want to move to another town? Perhaps you want to downsize your home? Will you need a job to provide income to pay off debt? Hopefully, your spouse had enough life insurance, but if they didn’t, some hard decisions need to be made. Once you settle on your plans, make a new budget. Whatever the circumstance, you need to start with a newly adjusted budget.

3. Legal document and beneficiaries need updating

After you first married you and your spouse probably combined your financial holdings. If so, several changes are necessary, like removing their name as beneficiary on your life insurance or IRA. You may want to close your joint bank account and open one in just your name. If you named them as your Power of Attorney (POA), you need to put someone else in that position. Updating your will and removing your late spouse as the recipient of your assets will require visiting your lawyer. As hard as this may be it’s very necessary. Don’t leave it to the courts to decide what to do with your estate. So just do it!

4. Implement, Monitor, and Learn

One of the saddest parts of my job is when a client comes in completely dumbfounded about their financial future. There’s typically one person, and it isn’t necessarily gendered specific, that handled the finances. The other is far too often clueless. Those are the ones that especially need to seek help from professionals. They need to find someone they trust and learn how to deal with their finances. With their spouse gone, they’re privy to hundreds of thousands of dollars from an IRA they may have known about but never dealt with. If you never handled investments at all don’t get taken advantage of, especially in the vulnerable emotional state of mind that follows death. That’s why you want to make sure the team that you build teaches you. You don’t’ want to be dealing with pushy salespeople in the midst of your heartbreak. They should be there to help and guide you and not take advantage of you. Take this time to invest in yourself and learn what you need to know to be successful in the future.

During your grieving time, the best thing to do is have your team of experts (a CFP^®, CPA, and attorney) in place for the necessary, quick decisions. These people make these types of recommendations every day and can guide you as you through it. One thing I’ve found to be true is those that listen to their team, in the long run, come out okay financially. So the bottom line, assemble a team now or at least have an idea of those you trust in a difficult situation long before you have to actually deal with death.

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