Where does one even begin? Do you start with estate planning? If that is the starting point my mom, who is a type B personality, got a few things right. Before her passing, she made me the joint owner of her house, and having a deed in joint tenancy with right of survivor ship kept the house out of probate. Good to know. She did the same thing with all of her retirement accounts: She made her grandchildren the co-owners of those accounts so upon her passing, they became owners thereby keeping those accounts out of probate. She also wrote a very explicit will. All of these things kept her estate out of the lengthy and expensive process of probate court.
These things aside, that was the extent of the estate planning. Prior to her death my mom and I sat together and wrote her obituary and she told me that everything I would need to execute her estate was filed in the gray file box. My type A mind was envisioning a box with folders that were labeled with the contents: banking, insurance, life insurance, utilities, car…. She also went on to tell me that on her laptop there was a file that had all her user names and passwords to all her accounts. Let me just say that in this moment, my type A self was so proud of my type B mother who was usually a ‘go with the flow’ type person. Spoiler alert: I am not a go with the flow type person.
Let me just say that while my planning and her ‘planning’ look very different, she planned her last weeks on this earth perfectly. Everyone knew her wishes, and their role in making her wishes her last reality, and everyone was prepared to do what she had asked of them and it was a beautiful time of togetherness and celebration of her life.
The morning after she passed, I opened up the file box. You see, for my Type A brain, being busy helps me process things. For many people business is about avoiding things, but for me business helps me think. I wasn’t prepared for what I found inside that box. There were three legitimate, labeled file folders. One was for a real estate transaction my mom conducted on my aunt’s behalf for her house in Mesa from 1995. The title company gave her the pre-labeled file with all the paperwork inside. One folder was copies of medical records that one doctor had assembled for her to take to a specialist when the cancer metastasized. The last folder was a legal file full of documentation form her days with Santa Garcia.
The rest of the box was filled with random bank statements, receipts from paying taxes, old check book registers, vet records from dogs log since passed, vet records for her current dog, investment statements, 10 year old W2 statements, titles for cars and trailers she no longer owned, student loan forgiveness forms and an assortment of other odds and ends. I spent three ours sorting and stacking, determining what was necessary for the estate, what might be necessary for future records, and what I could toss. I then went on to scan all of the documents that were deemed necessary for the closure of her accounts into my phone, used this information to determine how many death certificates* to order, and then clipped each group of documents together… because lord knows I couldn’t find any file folders to save my life!
I then went on to the laptop to try to print the file that had all her account user names and passwords. Once again, my idea of files and her idea of files were two different things. You see, we both have a secret computer file that has all of our accounts and passwords listed. Mine is organized alphabetically, and I delete accounts that are inactive, I update passwords yearly, and I have the information printed in hard copy with my will and living will. Hers was five random sheets of every account she ever opened, sometimes twice if she had a password reset, spread out randomly in one note. The best I could do with her printer off line was take screen shots with my phone, and then retype her passwords while going to each account, determining which user names and passwords were the correct user names and passwords, and eliminating those that were no longer in use, not necessary as part of estate closure, or outdated.
Estate executing is no joke. Once I felt like I had organized the information I had I decided that I needed a plan to prioritize dealing with all of her accounts. I had to develop an inventory of assets, and inventory of liabilities, and personal accounts and then evaluate which accounts were non essential, which accounts were essential, and which accounts had unfinished business.
I needed a new plan. I decided that the first thing to do was close out non essential accounts that were automatic bank drafts. The types of accounts that resulted in a monthly fee that she would no longer need but would continue to draft from her accounts needed to be closed first. Since they didn’t require a death certificate to close, this was a simple enough task and all of her revolving subscriptions were cancelled with in a day.
My next order of business was to find out where she was in her bill pay cycle. Since I planned to keep the utilities turned on in the house until I was able to deal with the contents of the house, I had to upload all her bill payees for utilities into my own bank account. I made sure to pay all the bills at once. I also contacted the insurance company to make sure she was up to date on the home owners insurance and car insurance. I also verified that the property taxes were up to date.
The accounts with unfinished business were the most difficult and time consuming to deal with. These are the people that require an official certified copy of the death certificate and an official copy of the will in color, and an affidavit and color copy of my identification that verifies I have the right to execute the estate, and three hairs from my first born daughter, a cheek swab, and soil from her house. Kidding. There was a ton of paperwork that each different company wanted and it was never consistent with any other company. One company wanted a letter from my Aunt who was listed as co-executor saying she gave permission for me to serve as executor. The bank holding the note on her car was particularly difficult, I think in part because they wanted me to give up so they could resell her car. Little did they know that I am too type A for that to happen.
Cancelling her credit cards was a piece of cake. Just call and send them the death certificate. They offer up all kinds of condolences, tell you several times that you are not responsible for the debt of the deceased, and then call and harass you to pay the debt you are not responsible for.
The bank account has been a bit of a challenge. Her estate was not required to go to probate because the total value of her assets was less than the probate threshold in the state where she lived and the rest of her estate was covered by her will which was very explicit is the disbursement of her belongings. Remember the part about making people joint owners of her house and accounts….smart woman my mother was. But, nonetheless, they have frozen her accounts. Not that it matters at this point, there wasn’t much money in the accounts.
In my type A ways, I made myself a plan that included a calendar with goal dates to accomplish the closure of her accounts, and the takeover of her car note. Each day I worked at it for 30 minutes, and I met all the goal dates except for the auto note. That one took about three extra weeks and an extra 30 minutes each day to deal with, and every day the same people gave me the same run around. Finally, the day I demanded to speak to someone in the legal department and told them that I thought the reason they were giving me the run around was because they were trying to manipulate me out of the equity in my mom’s car and profit from the deceased they released the title to me. It only took a month of phone calls, and me using the nasty voice in a loud manner for them to do it.
Another element of the execution of my mom’s estate was the estate sale. After her passing, I essentially changed the locks on her house, locked it up and left for two and a half months. It is a good thing I had that time to process, to mourn, to think and to be. If I would have tried to have an estate sale immediately after her passing everything would have been $1000. ‘Oh, you want to buy that coffee mug, $1000.’ I could totally see myself doing that too. Having the time to think about things, and reflect on who my mom was as a person, and what was meaningful to her, I was able to go into the estate sale in a better frame of mind. And a plan.
- Fly to Arizona
- Day One- sort the important things, the heirlooms, and the things I was taking with me. Luckily I am married to a planner. He measured the cargo space in my mom’s (now my) car, and purchased only enough boxes to fit in the cargo space. I packed those boxes by carefully evaluating what things meant the most to my mom and to me. I was able to bring back every last thing that I wanted and that my mom wanted me to have.
- Day two- estate sale! We opened up the house at 8:00 am and after a slow start, we were worried we would have a huge donation pile the next day. We needn’t have worried. We sold every last thing. Except the vacuum cleaner. We needed the vacuum cleaner. Bad.
- Day three- Cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning. Once everything was gone from the house, we cleaned like crazy.
- Day four- Finish up the banking business, insurance business, and walk around old town, visit with friends and family.
- Day 5-7 Road trip home
Let me say that people were skeptical of my plan. In fact my Aunt even suggested I revise my plan. Ummmm. No. After Day one, my hubby was feeling a little skeptical and overwhelmed as well, but he knows in addition to being type A, I am also stubborn, and I think he decided (wisely) that this was not a hill he was going to die on. Our kids that came to help out also just rolled with it. Either they didn’t think my plan was crazy, or they were used to my crazy plans having grown up with crazy plans that worked out…somehow. Some of the Aunties came to help out, and they too probably thought I was nuts, but also decided to go with it because that is what people do when they love you- they roll up their sleeves, put your craziness to the side and do what needs to be done, and between my kids, my husband, and the aunties, we made it happen.
On day four, the house was ready for my son and his little family to move in. Except the garage. That is a plan for another day.
My last order of business is filing her income tax return. I have to request duplicate copies of her W-2 forms from all of her income sources, including disbursements from her IRAs and retirement accounts and the social security administration.
*Many companies require an original certified copy of the death certificate when closing accounts, liquidating assets, and transferring ownership of property. In total we needed 10 Death certificates, so far, and we ordered 12.
