To be blunt about it, no marriage lasts forever.
“They all end in death or divorce,” says San Diego financial planner Ginita Wall. If you’re a woman and your marriage is rock-solid, “chances are you’re going to end as a widow, because men die before women.”
Coping with a husband’s death isn’t easy, because pain and problems arise in an emotional whirlwind that can overwhelm even a woman who was closely involved in the couple’s financial planning.
How do I settle the estate? How do I pay the bills? Can I establish credit of my own? Should I sell the house? What should I do with his pension benefits? How do I find a financial planner or an accountant I can trust?
There are important steps you can take to cope with the legal and financial issues that must be settled when you are emotionally vulnerable and might make decisions you will regret. You don’t have to be a victim of death again.
– Recognize the emotional toll. Perhaps the most important thing is to recognize that a widow’s judgment often is impaired because she is caught in a powerful emotional wringer.
The emotional toll can be so powerful that it can affect widows physically as well as psychologically. Widows frequently suffer from short-term memory loss, and their immune system can weaken. And it can take years to put it all behind them.
“I was numb for probably two months. I walked around almost like a zombie,” recalls Elaine Wade, whose husband, Len, died last December. “There are feelings that you’re going insane because you can’t remember things. There are a lot of physical things you get. I developed a tremor. I was nervous all the time. It was butterflies in my stomach. I didn’t know that’s what fear felt like. It was a horrible sensation, the physicalness of it.”
Perhaps the most dangerous feeling is self-doubt-that you’re incapable of understanding or coping with the issues or problems. You might feel paralyzed because you’ve never balanced a checkbook, let alone considered the pros and cons of pension annuities.
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Many widows also must conquer feelings of guilt, particularly when it comes to money. Some endlessly worry, “What would he have done?” Some feel undeserving, that things such as a life insurance payment are somehow ill-gotten gains.
“The way you got the money makes a big difference in how you feel about the money,” says Wall, who has written several personal finance books, including “Our Money, Our Selves: Money Management for Each Stage of a Woman’s Life” (Consumer Reports Books, $17).
“Getting $50,000 from a lucky lottery ticket is very different from getting $50,000 from life insurance because your husband died.”
Many widows also become disinterested, letting decisions languish or leaving them for adult children. Other widows develop a compulsion to act decisively, to sell assets, to move, to remodel the house. They are driven to prove they can again control something, anything.
“They are trying to create order out of chaos,” says Elizabeth T. Boatwright, a financial planner.
– Get organized. There is one clear way to put that impulse for action to good use. One of a widow’s first challenges is to get organized, to wade through the legal and financial quagmire. It can be a daunting task.
The need is so great and the paperwork so voluminous that it’s wise to dedicate a table, file cabinet or even a room to the task, suggests Alexandra Armstrong, author of “On Your Own: A Widow’s Passage to Emotional and Financial Well-being” (Dearborn Financial Publishing Inc., $20).
It’s important to assemble the pertinent data for all your probate or estate records, assets, debts, insurance policies, tax information, appraisals-everything that comes along. Label an envelope for “unpaid bills.”
It’s also prudent to line up a team of trusted advisers, such as an accountant, a lawyer and a financial planner. You don’t have to go it alone.
– Work up a budget. On average, a widow is 56 years old when her husband dies. Her career opportunities are drawing to a close. If death consults the actuarial tables, she’ll live nearly three more decades.
“It’s a singular question: Am I going to outlive my money, or is my money going to outlive me?” says Mike Weakley, managing executive of Reinhardt-Werba-Bowen Advisory Services in San Jose, Calif. “That says it all right there.”
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Identify all potential sources of income. List every significant asset you own, and classify whether it’s liquid or difficult to cash in quickly. Jot down all your liabilities, from mortgages to credit cards. Project your expenses with an eye toward the changes ahead. Will you have legal or accounting bills? Do you need to buy medical insurance? Do you plan to remodel so your home doesn’t seem haunted by your husband?
– Identify decisions you must make, and postpone the rest. Like it or not, decisions loom. Some must be addressed immediately, but others can-and should-be postponed. That doesn’t mean you put them off forever; it means you should avoid buyer’s remorse by postponing any decision that’s logical to postpone. The point is to avoid emotionally charged decisions that are irrevocable.
Obviously, not all decisions or tasks can be deferred, but this is one time financial planners actually will utter advice they normally consider profane: Procrastinate. That’s partly because many widows have had little experience in money matters and need time to learn about financial issues before they plunge in. But it’s largely because emotions frequently override logic.
For tax, financial and lifestyle reasons, a widow should avoid hastily selling her home in order to move into a place that’s smaller and isn’t filled with memories of her husband.
Likewise, many widows and planners say widows frequently harm themselves irreparably by ordering expensive remodeling jobs, buying investments from cold-calling brokers, giving their kids money for a down payment on a house or lending money to hard-luck relatives. There’s cash today, but they don’t have a grasp of what they’ll need three decades later.
“They somehow find ways to get rid of it,” Boatwright says. “I tell people not to spend it in the first years. It’s truly a crisis. . . . The unfortunate part is they don’t understand the future value of the money. It’s going to be a real setback later on.”