Picking up the pieces after an unexpected death
March 4, 2016 7:56 AM Subscribe
My brother in law just passed away suddenly from a brain hemorrhage in his mid 40's leaving a wife and young family. He was the sole wage earner and handled all of the family's financial matters. His wife has almost zero knowledge of what bank/stock accounts or loans he had setup. Help us pick up the various pieces - we have lots of questions.
This is in California. He was an engineer at a large public tech company and likely had good benefits.
With respect to his employer, what happens in cases like this to the family's health insurance. We're assuming it ends soon (end of month?). What are the options? COBRA or Obamacare? We don't know if he had any life insurance through his employer - should we talk to HR? - what usually happens in cases like this? He also likely had employee stock and possibly options.
The family has two houses and two mortgages. The deeds for both homes are in his name only. How to we change this? Does it need to be changed before we sell either of the houses?
How do we track down any of his accounts and get control of them. We don't have any of his passwords and we don't know how security minded he was. He left a windows laptop locked with a password. I haven't looked at it yet - but from what I've read it should be possible to bypass the login and get to whatever files are there. Hopefully that will give us some information. We also plan to pull a credit report which should also give a list of open accounts.
I'm sure there's lots we have't even thought of yet. This is a first for the whole family so we're clueless.
This is in California. He was an engineer at a large public tech company and likely had good benefits.
With respect to his employer, what happens in cases like this to the family's health insurance. We're assuming it ends soon (end of month?). What are the options? COBRA or Obamacare? We don't know if he had any life insurance through his employer - should we talk to HR? - what usually happens in cases like this? He also likely had employee stock and possibly options.
The family has two houses and two mortgages. The deeds for both homes are in his name only. How to we change this? Does it need to be changed before we sell either of the houses?
How do we track down any of his accounts and get control of them. We don't have any of his passwords and we don't know how security minded he was. He left a windows laptop locked with a password. I haven't looked at it yet - but from what I've read it should be possible to bypass the login and get to whatever files are there. Hopefully that will give us some information. We also plan to pull a credit report which should also give a list of open accounts.
I'm sure there's lots we have't even thought of yet. This is a first for the whole family so we're clueless.
I am sorry for your loss. A wills and trusts lawyer will help and is pretty necessary for this sort of situation, the rest of my suggestions are presuming that this is the first and non-optional step.
A call to HR at the company will help w/r/t insurance or stuff like managing beneficiaries to IRAs or 401Ks or whatnot. They will be able to extend health insurance in some way (like COBRA) thanks to the existence of Obamacare. California is a community property state which should make things (like the house situation) a little simpler. Depending on how paper-conscious he was, there may be a lot of bills and whatnot that can help shed light on to some accounts especially around tax time. When my father died we made a list of all of them with contact information and put it on a TODO list and that was a job we assigned to someone who was not grieving when they asked if they could help ("please cancel all these services and magazines"). You can call the bank and other institutions that link to cards in his wallet and explain the situation. Since he was married and the wife is next of kin this will be less painless than maybe you think.
People were very kind to me when I had to manage a lot of this stuff (late bills, not understanding systems and whatever) when my father died suddenly and we had to step in and take over and didn't know what we were doing.
posted by jessamyn at 8:06 AM on March 4, 2016 [8 favorites]
A call to HR at the company will help w/r/t insurance or stuff like managing beneficiaries to IRAs or 401Ks or whatnot. They will be able to extend health insurance in some way (like COBRA) thanks to the existence of Obamacare. California is a community property state which should make things (like the house situation) a little simpler. Depending on how paper-conscious he was, there may be a lot of bills and whatnot that can help shed light on to some accounts especially around tax time. When my father died we made a list of all of them with contact information and put it on a TODO list and that was a job we assigned to someone who was not grieving when they asked if they could help ("please cancel all these services and magazines"). You can call the bank and other institutions that link to cards in his wallet and explain the situation. Since he was married and the wife is next of kin this will be less painless than maybe you think.
People were very kind to me when I had to manage a lot of this stuff (late bills, not understanding systems and whatever) when my father died suddenly and we had to step in and take over and didn't know what we were doing.
posted by jessamyn at 8:06 AM on March 4, 2016 [8 favorites]
There's also a greater-than-zero chance that his phone will also get his mail and other things and has a password (a kid's birthday, a wedding anniversary?) that is less secure than his laptop so I'd consider that route if you have it as an option.
posted by jessamyn at 8:15 AM on March 4, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by jessamyn at 8:15 AM on March 4, 2016 [2 favorites]
Call HR first, for various reasons but also on the off chance that one of his benefits was legal services, or if they just know some secret stuff about all this since they've probably been through it before.
There are going to be some things you will not be able to guess, and you will have to watch the mail for several months for statements or late notices or other clues.
Jessamyn's recommendation to compile a list of difficult phone calls that a neutral party can make is very good. Maybe you can take some of those, or manage the list and assign those calls to other people who want to help? It's fine if they don't have the authority to take any action, just have them make the first phone call where they say, "Hey, AT&T, what needs to happen when an accountholder dies? What if we want to close the account? What if we want to transfer to the wife? Okay, thank you, I have made a list of these things and we will call back."
(AT&T has been a heartlessly difficult call for three friends of mine, I wish they'd let someone else do that one. Having to say "s/he died" over and over is just brutal. Being told you can't do anything until you have a death certificate and yes, they will suspend the account if it doesn't get paid, is tough. You're going to hear that over and over. Let a neighbor or coworker absorb that blow.)
You can do the same with mail. Get a bucket or basket and let her just dump in anything she doesn't want to open and have a trusted helper open, log everything, scan what looks important, and box up the opened mail to store for a year and then dump. Condolence cards, a special kind of hell, can be routed to a special box for later.
Another thing you might do is set up two Google spreadsheets to share - one "insiders only" and one "general help", and use those as needed to manage the lists and responses and todos.
And that death certificate thing is a huge administrative hangup, so as much as you may be feeling panicky about all this just because it's awful, you may not be able to tackle much of it until that happens. I think the turnaround time on that varies wildly from region to region but it could be weeks.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:24 AM on March 4, 2016 [6 favorites]
There are going to be some things you will not be able to guess, and you will have to watch the mail for several months for statements or late notices or other clues.
Jessamyn's recommendation to compile a list of difficult phone calls that a neutral party can make is very good. Maybe you can take some of those, or manage the list and assign those calls to other people who want to help? It's fine if they don't have the authority to take any action, just have them make the first phone call where they say, "Hey, AT&T, what needs to happen when an accountholder dies? What if we want to close the account? What if we want to transfer to the wife? Okay, thank you, I have made a list of these things and we will call back."
(AT&T has been a heartlessly difficult call for three friends of mine, I wish they'd let someone else do that one. Having to say "s/he died" over and over is just brutal. Being told you can't do anything until you have a death certificate and yes, they will suspend the account if it doesn't get paid, is tough. You're going to hear that over and over. Let a neighbor or coworker absorb that blow.)
You can do the same with mail. Get a bucket or basket and let her just dump in anything she doesn't want to open and have a trusted helper open, log everything, scan what looks important, and box up the opened mail to store for a year and then dump. Condolence cards, a special kind of hell, can be routed to a special box for later.
Another thing you might do is set up two Google spreadsheets to share - one "insiders only" and one "general help", and use those as needed to manage the lists and responses and todos.
And that death certificate thing is a huge administrative hangup, so as much as you may be feeling panicky about all this just because it's awful, you may not be able to tackle much of it until that happens. I think the turnaround time on that varies wildly from region to region but it could be weeks.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:24 AM on March 4, 2016 [6 favorites]
I'm so sorry.
Given your description of the company, it is a strong possibility that he had life insurance as an employment benefit.
The family will need multiple copies of the death certificate. When my mother died suddenly, the funeral home asked us how many copies were needed. We got the standard 10, but wish now that we'd requested more.
posted by apartment dweller at 8:27 AM on March 4, 2016 [7 favorites]
Given your description of the company, it is a strong possibility that he had life insurance as an employment benefit.
The family will need multiple copies of the death certificate. When my mother died suddenly, the funeral home asked us how many copies were needed. We got the standard 10, but wish now that we'd requested more.
posted by apartment dweller at 8:27 AM on March 4, 2016 [7 favorites]
I would suggest calling the credit card companies from the credit cards in his wallet and asking them what is the procedure for getting access to his statements. From those statements you might find information about life insurance, etc. Same of course from check book stubs.
posted by OCDan at 8:28 AM on March 4, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by OCDan at 8:28 AM on March 4, 2016 [1 favorite]
Call HR and the lawyer today, and everything else can wait till Monday.
posted by SMPA at 8:32 AM on March 4, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by SMPA at 8:32 AM on March 4, 2016 [4 favorites]
All of the above is good advice, especially contacting his HR.
Do Not call his credit card companies before talking to a lawyer. You need to find out what type of estate he had before assuming responsibility for any debts.
An anecdote: when my neighbor died under similar circumstances (a young father with a young family, and good employer benefits), the way his legal situation was set up with regard to property ownership and distribution of benefits effectively meant that he had no estate - and he had like $30K in CC debt. Say what you will, but the CC company had to eat his debt. Which somewhat saved the wife/children, as they needed that money for other expenses. It only worked out in the wife's favor because she did not call the CC company and automatically assume responsibility for his debt. When she got the bill in the mail she had her lawyer send a letter with a copy of the death certificate saying that he had passed. Obviously I'm not covering all of the details here, but the point is, get the help of an estate lawyer.
posted by vignettist at 9:47 AM on March 4, 2016 [9 favorites]
Do Not call his credit card companies before talking to a lawyer. You need to find out what type of estate he had before assuming responsibility for any debts.
An anecdote: when my neighbor died under similar circumstances (a young father with a young family, and good employer benefits), the way his legal situation was set up with regard to property ownership and distribution of benefits effectively meant that he had no estate - and he had like $30K in CC debt. Say what you will, but the CC company had to eat his debt. Which somewhat saved the wife/children, as they needed that money for other expenses. It only worked out in the wife's favor because she did not call the CC company and automatically assume responsibility for his debt. When she got the bill in the mail she had her lawyer send a letter with a copy of the death certificate saying that he had passed. Obviously I'm not covering all of the details here, but the point is, get the help of an estate lawyer.
posted by vignettist at 9:47 AM on March 4, 2016 [9 favorites]
And be sure his wife applies for Social Security Survivor's benefits for the kids. This should help her out a bit and the kids are totally entitled to it. Unfortunately it stops when they finish High school, it used to go to age 21 , thank Ronnie Reagan for cutting that.
posted by mareli at 10:41 AM on March 4, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by mareli at 10:41 AM on March 4, 2016 [4 favorites]
I'm sorry for your loss. Everyone else has the legal / financial aspects covered pretty well. I just want to throw something out there that they may not have : if he had an outgoing voicemail message that the family would like to save before they cancel his cell contract, I built a tool named VMSave that can help. It's free, I get nothing out of it, but a lot of people have found a bit of solace.
posted by zrail at 10:57 AM on March 4, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by zrail at 10:57 AM on March 4, 2016 [6 favorites]
I have worked for a big tech company. They had *very* good survivor benefits, and from a distance, HR seemed to actively want to help. No promises, obviously, but one more reason to call sooner rather than later.
posted by lorimt at 1:06 PM on March 4, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by lorimt at 1:06 PM on March 4, 2016 [1 favorite]
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