Statements. One sure way for an executor to find the money (and conversely the debt) is to check the statements as they come in. Once someone passes away, the mail should be forwarded to the executor. Some companies may be on an annual billing cycle and it may take a full year for the executor to know all of the accounts.
Nine months after my mother died, I received a bill for some type of insurance that I did not know she was carrying. There was no death benefit but I was easily able to get a refund for the unused premium.
My mother was great about paying her bills and luckily never missed a payment so the services she expected continued to the day she died. However, there was a mishap once with her auto insurance bill. She got a reminder for a bill she was convinced she had paid. While she had indeed written out the check and sealed the envelope, it had slipped behind her desk and was not mailed. Luckily, she found the envelope and paid the bill without consequence.
Some elderly people agree to have their statements rerouted to someone else along with control of their checkbook. However, totally relinquishing control may not be an appealing option to many. Arranging for duplicate statements may be a more acceptable option. Most banks, insurance companies and other institutions will comply with a request for duplicate statements although some charge a fee.
Tip: If at all possible, see if your parent will agree to provide you with duplicate statements while they are alive. This will give you a much more complete picture of your parent’s finances and surprises will be less likely for the executor.
Information found on this web site is for general informational purposes only based on personal experience and should not be construed as legal, tax or other professional advice. You should consult an experienced attorney , tax professional or financial advisor concerning your particular factual situation and any specific questions you may have.
Living wills. I received a couple of great suggestions regarding living wills and trusts. One friend recommended posting the copy on the wall next to the person’s bed. Another friend recommended scanning a copy of important documents like living wills into your computer. That way, you can have access to them if you are away from home.
Unclaimed Funds. AARP recently had a blurb about unclaimed funds where they refer to two helpful sources.
Information found on this web site is for general informational purposes only based on personal experience and should not be construed as legal, tax or other professional advice. You should consult an experienced attorney , tax professional or financial advisor concerning your particular factual situation and any specific questions you may have.
Digital Assets. I remember when my parents got their first and only desk-top computer. It was in the late 1990’s and it was a hand-me-down from friends who were early technology adapters. At first, they were very interested in learning how to use it. For a while I believe they were spending more money on computer tutors than food.
When my father died, he had notebooks filled with instructions about how to log on. He wanted to use the computer for word processing and my mother wanted to learn how to use email. However, they both suffered from fear of deletion. That is, they were both terrified that they would delete what they had written, never be able to recover the text or the thought and some how break the computer in the process. Consequently, my father continued to do his creative writing in long hand and my mother used the telephone to communicate.
My mother ultimately overcame her diagraphephobia (can you believe there is a word for fear of deletion?) and became quite adept at playing bridge online, but she never did use email.
It is much more common now for people in my parents’ generation to use computers so that they can communicate with their children and grandchildren. These Digital Immigrants are amassing digital assets. Increasingly, digital assets are a consideration in estate planning. There are companies that have developed products that help to protect digital assets and assure that data is accessible to executors or named individuals after the owner passes away. Entrustet, Legacy Locker and DataInherit are three such companies.
Tips: Check the websites above to see what qualifies as a digital asset. Entrustet has a digital property search function for deceased people. So, even if it was not a consideration during estate planning, the executor can obtain the information. It is always best to obtain a list of accounts and passwords while your parents are still alive.
Information found on this web site is for general informational purposes only based on personal experience and should not be construed as legal, tax or other professional advice. You should consult an experienced attorney , tax professional or financial advisor concerning your particular factual situation and any specific questions you may have.
Eternity Leave. I recently heard the term eternity leave and like it a lot. Word Spy defines it as job protection and paid leave for people caring for dying loved ones. I would suggest that the definition be expanded to include “deceased loved ones” as well.
Being an executor is extremely time-consuming and for people with full-time jobs can be overwhelming. Increasingly, people are negotiating time-off to fulfill their responsibilities as executor.
There are many things that require time and attention during the normal 9:00-5:00 work day which could distract an executor from their day-job. Disposing of assets and property can often require additional work on-site. Many businesses that an executor needs to contact are only open during work hours.
Some executors are opting to focus a specific amount of time on their executor-duties and request time-off to do so. It can be as simple as a part-time arrangement that allows for a couple of hours a week, or it can be a complete hiatus from work for some period of time. One friend of mine quit her job completely to deal with the complexities of her father’s estate.
Tips: See if your job has eternity leave benefits. Negotiate with your employer for an arrangement that would allow you to complete your executor duties. Consider paying yourself from the estate to compensate for lost wages.
Information found on this web site is for general informational purposes only based on personal experience and should not be construed as legal, tax or other professional advice. You should consult an experienced attorney , tax professional or financial advisor concerning your particular factual situation and any specific questions you may have.
Co-executors. My parents always strove to treat my sister and me equally and fairly. In death, they wanted to continue the tradition and named both my sister and me to be co-executors of their will. I know that their intent was to have a fair and equal distribution of their assets and not to appear to favor one over the other with the assignation of executor.
My sister lives on the West Coast and I live on the East Coast. To jointly execute the will would have meant countless hours coordinating the signing and notarizing of documents and co-signing checks. It would have been a logistical nightmare.
Luckily, my sister and I have a wonderful and trusting relationship. Soon after my mother died, my sister agreed to formally renounce her role as executor, leaving me as the sole executor. She had no interest in the administrative minutia that is a large part of being an executor. I found being an executor to be extremely time-consuming and was grateful that I did not have the added burden of coordinating every move with my sister.
Tips: Parents should consider the skill sets and availability of their children when choosing an executor. If there is doubt that the siblings will treat each other fairly, consider a neutral party outside the family, like a lawyer. If the choice is to have multiple executors, understand that this will result in incremental time coordinating with each other. Finally, if you are one of multiple executors you can formally renounce your responsibilities.
Information found on this web site is for general informational purposes only based on personal experience and should not be construed as legal, tax or other professional advice. You should consult an experienced attorney , tax professional or financial advisor concerning your particular factual situation and any specific questions you may have.
Burial plots. In 1948 my father’s father bought a funeral plot with four grave spaces for $300. He put $90 as a down payment and paid the rest in $9 monthly installments. I know this because I found the original deed of sale in my mother’s papers. I subsequently had to reopen my father’s estate in order to transfer ownership of the plots to my sister and me.
Technically, it was one plot with four grave spaces. The spaces were for my grandmother and grandfather who are buried there and presumably their children, my father and his sister. When my grandfather purchased the plot, he didn’t take into account the fact that his children might marry, or decide on different burial arrangements. As it turns out, they did. Two of the grave spaces remain unused to this day.
The cemetery will not purchase them back and resell them – so it is up to the owners to sell the burial plots. And grave spaces can run in the thousands of dollars. I imagined it would be quite difficult and have been procrastinating this sale for several years. As it turns out, you can sell plots on ebay and craigslist as well as a number of aggregators who provide a market to buy and sell plots in multiple geographic areas. For example: Buyandsellcemeteryplots.com, plotexchange.com, plotbrokers.com and thecemeteryregistry.com to name a few. Some cemeteries even have facebook pages. Reselling plots is a virtual cottage industry. Who knew?
Selling a grave site can involve fees levied by the cemetery to legally transfer the deed of ownership. Additionally, the state of New Jersey requires a maintenance and preservation fee which can equal 15% of the purchase price. This is not to maintain the actual grave, but is for maintenance and preservation of the cemetery itself.
Tips: Ideally, you would know the burial arrangements for your parents and would have the proper documentation for any burial plots, vaults, mausoleums, etc. If you are in possession of plots that will not be used, contact the cemetery to see if they will purchase the plots, or at a minimum, what the going rate is for the plots. Additionally, you should find out what mandatory fees exist and what the legal process is for transferring title to the plots. You should also find out if the cemetery has any religious restrictions that would impact your sale.
Information found on this web site is for general informational purposes only based on personal experience and should not be construed as legal, tax or other professional advice. You should consult an experienced attorney , tax professional or financial advisor concerning your particular factual situation and any specific questions you may have.
Absentee Ballots. Elderly people vote. According to the US Census, people over 65 years old have a greater percentage of registered voters than any other age group and higher voting rates as well. My mother died two days before election day in 2006, after a several week stay in the hospital. One of our last projects together was trying to obtain an absentee ballot as she was keen on voting.
As your parents or loved ones get older, the easiest way for them to vote is through an absentee ballot. And the easiest way to get an absentee ballot is to plan ahead so that you are not racing against the clock and dealing with unnecessary bureaucracy.
Please note, once you are acting as executor, absentee ballots are totally irrelevant as the deceased can not vote. Except of course, in Chicago.
Tips: Encourage your elderly parents to apply for absentee ballots and assist them in obtaining them. If you know your parent is going into the hospital for an operation or treatment, think ahead and get the absentee ballot.
Information found on this web site is for general informational purposes only based on personal experience and should not be construed as legal, tax or other professional advice. You should consult an experienced attorney , tax professional or financial advisor concerning your particular factual situation and any specific questions you may have.
Hoarding. I can not get this article from the AARP magazine, The Hoarders Among Us, February 4, 2011 out of my mind. I remember hearing about the Collyer Brothers many years ago and being fascinated with their story. They died surrounded by 130 tons of waste they had accumulated. (Most people in my generation never heard of the Collyer Brothers as they died in the 1940’s.) As a complete neat freak, hoarding both intrigues and frightens me.
Luckily, I did not have to deal with hoarding with my parents. The only thing that came close was the incredible number of plastic bags that my mother seemed to have amassed. For some reason, she had a deeply held belief that you can never have too many. I am now an avid recycler of plastic bags and try to use my own reusable grocery bags whenever possible.
That said, the article points out that the hoarding tends to be more prevalent in older people and that it gets worse with age. If you are dealing with hoarders, the article suggests that therapy is useful and that it is a long and agonizing process to get hoarders to relinquish possessions, even useless ones.
Tip: Get a dumpster. Or two.
Information found on this web site is for general informational purposes only based on personal experience and should not be construed as legal, tax or other professional advice. You should consult an experienced attorney , tax professional or financial advisor concerning your particular factual situation and any specific questions you may have.
Photographs. My father was the photographer in our family. He had a camera at every family event. First it was a Brownie and then a Polaroid and eventually a Nikon with a zoom lens. He wasn’t focused on composition or artful photographs, he was chronicling the events. When he died, he left behind over 15 albums of Polaroids and 85 sleeves of 100 color slides each dating back to 1957. These photos and slides take up a lot of room and are currently occupying a closet in my house.
This is in stark contrast to the over 8000 digital photos I have of our daughter which are all housed on my computer and various back-up cd’s and portable disc drives, none of which would fill a bread box. I have long imagined that I would some day digitize my father’s photos. However, that would be a long and tedious process. There are services now that will do the scanning for you, but you still have to organize your photographs and it is quite costly if you have a huge volume of photos.
We do look at the pictures and thoroughly enjoy doing so. We recognize virtually everyone since they all family members and close friends. My father was meticulous about labeling the Polaroids so in the event we don’t know, we can look on the back and find out.
Tips: If you are taking the slides, don’t forget to take the slide projector. Store the photos in a cool, dry place to minimize further degradation. Enjoy the photos.
Information found on this web site is for general informational purposes only based on personal experience and should not be construed as legal, tax or other professional advice. You should consult an experienced attorney , tax professional or financial advisor concerning your particular factual situation and any specific questions you may have.
Death Certificates. When my mother died, the gentleman from the funeral parlor asked me how many death certificates I “wanted”. Actually, I thought, I didn’t “want” any. I quickly snapped out of contrarian-mode and asked what he recommended. He said, one for every bank account and 5 was usually sufficient. I got 10. It was not enough.
It is not only bank accounts, but brokerage accounts, insurance policies, credit cards and all sorts of unexpected institutions and corporations that require an original death certificate and letters testamentary, which proves you are the executor. This “prove it” mentality on the part of institutions quickly snapped me out of the denial stage of grieving.
Death certificates are issued by the state in which the person died. So, despite the fact that my mother lived in NJ, her death certificate was issued by NY since she died in a hospital there. Getting extras is always possible, but it is tedious and time consuming and can disrupt the flow if you are acting as executor.
Tips: Get 20. If you are running low, another option would be to include a self-addressed stamped envelope and ask the institutions that require it to return the original to you after they have verified the information.
Information found on this web site is for general informational purposes only based on personal experience and should not be construed as legal, tax or other professional advice. You should consult an experienced attorney , tax professional or financial advisor concerning your particular factual situation and any specific questions you may have.
Julie Rothhouse
The Executor Advisor 