While we might spend time planning for our own death including preparing our will, ensuring that we have enough life insurance and estate planning, most of us don’t consider what will happen if we are left alone after our spouse has passed away. I know that I never really considered the loss of my spouse until today, but lets step back and take a look what the loss of your spouse might mean.
In my case, our marriage is a partnership. You could mention the loss of income due to the loss of your spouse, but we’ll skip that in this discussion. What I want to look at is how the loss of your spouse would impact your life as the skill set that they bring to your marriage would be lost.
The classic example would be the husband that keeps track of all the finances. When the man passes away the wife is left not knowing how to run the finances, which can cause a lot of stress when they are in the process of grieving.
I would encourage you to sit down with your spouse and look at what skills you each bring to the table. Maybe one of you is a good cook and the other one is responsible for running the kids around. What I would suggest is work together to create an instruction book of sorts that would detail all the information that would be required to run the household. This process will take time, but will also be a work in progress as things will change over time. The idea here is to make it as easy as possible for the surviving spouse to run the home just as it was before the death.
Worst case you could use the guide that you put together for the guardian of your surviving children. No one hopes that they pass away, but the information that you put together can ensure that your loved ones continue to have a good quality of life after you have passed away. All in all, it is time well spent.
Topics #estate #loss #planning #wills
