As many of you now know, it has been a roller coaster of a year for me. Brian and I were married in January, but had to delay our honeymoon for six months due to Omicron and the ongoing crises with my parents, who both passed away this spring, 57 days apart. You can read the initial installment of my ongoing odyssey HERE.
One question I posed last time was: Where is Mom and Dad’s money? Dad recently had invested some money with a new firm in Toronto, but I had no idea where that was. And for the period he was in the hospital prior to his death and up to Mom’s death, neither did Mom. Plus, there were investments elsewhere.
But where? Yikes.
We were able to determine—and confirm—where the funds were in four ways:
- I happened to know that Dad came to this new investment firm via an economist friend of ours, so I was able to ask him for the contact info.
- My siblings and I went through and organized all the mail in their house, opened and unopened, to find statements from the various investment vehicles.
- We also went through their filed income tax returns with their accountant, and those included information on the various investments they had.
- My brother and I had been dealing with Mom and Dad’s banking for years via the bank’s online portal, so we were able to see what funds were there in the various accounts affiliated with the bank. We both had signing authority on the joint accounts so this was fine while one parent was still alive. And we made sure to have a meeting with their bank manager before Mom passed away. (FYI our sister lives out of the country and she was fine with us handling things on the ground here.)
As for the contents of their safety deposit box, after the 2017 debacle in Israel, my brother and I made sure we had access to it—as long as both of us were present to open it. We made sure to empty that box out before Mom passed away as well. We opened our own joint box and put the contents there.
So yes, we were able to figure out where their money was, but I wouldn’t want my children to have to go through what we did to find my money when the time comes.
If my parents had been more cooperative, I would have asked them to help me fill out a document that listed all important information that we would need when they died. Unfortunately, they conducted themselves as if they would never die—and I’m sure a lot of people do that.
Here are some resources that you can use for your situation:
- My good friend and fellow Canadian Kellie Parks has offered a free Google Sheet, called “Steps and Details In Event of Death,” which you can use for just this purpose. While it is aimed at Canadians, it can easily be used as a template for people from all over to use. These concepts are universal.
- Freewill.com has a free end-of-life planning checklist as well, available HERE.
- There are wedding and event planners, so why are not there consultants to help you through this? There are. This article describes an entire industry of end-of-life specialists who help dying people and their families navigate what Mom and Dad didn’t want to discuss with us.
- Pastor Rick Craig offers a book about end-of-life planning, available HERE.
- The lawyer I used to draw up my power of attorney and will provided me with a word document that I could list or embed information (including account numbers, void checks, statements, policies and beneficiaries) on banking, investments, mortgage, insurance, property tax and utilities.
- This document also contains contact information for my insurance advisors, accountant, investment advisors, bankers, lawyers, etc. Your lawyer probably has a similar template to provide to you. I have filled this out and put a copy in a folder of my Dropbox (which I have shared).
- And while I have the wills, powers of attorney, and insurance documents in a secure safe (and no, I’m not telling you where it is), my husband and daughter have the combination, and I have scanned these documents and put the PDF’s in that same folder of my Dropbox. I use cloudHQ to back up my Dropbox and other cloud storage to Box. I’m not taking any chances.
Next, I will go over how we cleared out the house in record time. And coming up: if my parents had been more tech-savvy (thank goodness they were not), I’d have to deal with their digital assets, not just their physical ones. How would I have managed that?
And also, I’ll be covering how I stayed in business in the last decade despite going from crisis to crisis with my parents.
Internationally renowned ProAdvisor Esther Friedberg Karp shares a clever way she helped a client get what it wanted (by any means necessary).
Esther Friedberg Karp is an internationally-renowned trainer, writer and speaker from Toronto, where she runs her QuickBooks consulting practice, EFK CompuBooks Inc. Consistently in Insightful Accountant's Top 100 ProAdvisors, she has been named to the Top 10 twice.
With the unique distinction of holding ProAdvisor certifications in the US, Canadian, UK, and International versions of QuickBooks, she has traveled the world with Intuit. She has spoken at conferences such as QuickBooks Connect, Scaling New Heights, and Future Forward, and has written countless articles for Intuit Global.
Esther has been named one of the “Top 50 Women in Accounting,” a “Top 10 Influencer” in the Canadian Bookkeeping World, and is a repeat nominee for the “RBC Canadian Women’s Entrepreneur Awards.” She counts among her clients many international companies, as well as accounting professionals seeking her out on behalf of their own clients for her expertise in multi-currency and various countries’ editions of QuickBooks Desktop and Online.
She can be reached at esther@e-compubooks.com or 416-410-0750.
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