Helping Your Heirs Get What’s Theirs

Your advance preparation will spare your kin weeks of aggravation.

 Photo by Centre for Ageing Better on Unsplash

The kitchen renovation is 95% complete, our finances are secure again after the latest incident of identity theft, and we have planned, executed, and survived three home invitational events around the Jewish High Holidays. Now, finally, we have returned to the front burner the task of assembling everything our children need to know when one or both of us departs this earthly vale.

It is a somewhat macabre enterprise, when we both are enjoying good health, to make plans for an eventuality that might be 20 or 30 years hence. Then again, there’s always the risk of being hit by the proverbial bus. Regardless, we feel compelled to compile. We feel an urgent need to gather up the various pieces of our lives, organize them into a neat package, and share them with our children, who will surely protest that we are being morbid, and why are we even talking about this now? Still we persist, driven by a desire to spare them an anguished scavenger hunt without our guidance.

Back in the day (I’m told), you could tie up the deceased’s loose ends by checking their mail for a month and noting all the bills. That doesn’t work anymore, not when the bills might be automated withdrawals from your bank account or a credit card. Now you need to note online accounts, and passwords, and most important of all, the password for your phone (because some of your accounts require two-step verification and step two is a text to your phone).

Three years ago, we took a first stab at the task, although in truth, it was more for my wife’s benefit since I am the one in charge of finances and record keeping.  I prepared a document that covered bank accounts, passwords, and a rundown of recurring monthly bills, including those being paid electronically. It was a start, but barely. Today it is totally out of date and inadequate for guiding our progeny.

What to Include

Here are things we now know we need to include:

• Banking. Bank account numbers, ATM passwords, and passwords for online access are a great place to start. Recently a banker shared this important tip: By giving our son or daughter authority to access the accounts, they can get at the funds immediately, which might come in handy for paying funeral expenses. Without this extra stipulation, they would have to wait for the wheels of the legal system to spin, a process unlikely to speedy or efficient.

• Safe deposit box. They need to know where it is, where the key is, and some idea of what’s in it. (Another tip: don’t leave the original copy of your will in the safe deposit box, as that will be frozen quickly. Leave a copy in the box and keep the original in your home or in this tidy package.)

• Investments. In our case, that’s simple: two retirement funds, with different firms and different advisers. For more aggressive investors, find all stock and bond certificates. Again, online access sites and passwords.

• Insurance. Life insurance and health insurance policies, and contact information.

• Credit cards. There are several, each with different pass codes. We need to include online access to both so they can check any unpaid balances.

• Property. We need to locate the deed. If we were still paying on our loan, we would need to supply the paperwork for mortgage loans, second mortgages, and line of credit loans. That goes for car and boat loans too.

• Our intentions. Aside from what we’re bequeathing to the heirs, we have made some charitable commitments that must be honored. They are in the will, but the heirs need to know.

• Social security accounts. They need to know, just so they can inform Social Security to stop the checks.

• Funeral arrangements. They need to know that we’ve purchased two plots in a green cemetery, and that one funeral home will know what to do.

• Contacts. All the people they might need to contact: our tax accountant, the attorney who drew up the wills, the investment advisers, potential pallbearers, family members, and close friends that should be notified.

• Subscriptions. Publication subscriptions go on forever until you tell them to stop. The same is true for software subscriptions.

Presentation

My wife envisions putting all the information, neatly arranged and clearly organized, into three spiral notebooks, one for each child and one for us to keep hand. Whenever information changes, as it surely will, we can change the relevant pages in the notebooks.

If you want a more elegant system, you can purchase a Nokbox™(Nok stands for next of kin) from a company called (you guessed it) Nokbox. The product, a carton and folders with pre-printed labels for every possible financial detail, starts at $159 and can range up to $299 for the fireproof box plus legal and estate plan folders. (Warning: If you go to the Nokbox site, in five minutes ads for Nokbox will begin appearing near the top of your Facebook feed.)

You can find more suggestions for death binders and materials to include in them on the Internet.

Do your heirs a favor: Prepare ahead of time. And in the meantime, watch out for that bus.