Sitting with my Dad in the hospital this spring, I was reminded of the importance of sharing your account information with your spouse. My Dad was very ill, then improving, but clearly not in any condition to manage his finances. (For several days he was repeating “2019” under his breath, to be ready for his orientation questions.)
This was a bit of a problem, as he pays most of the household bills out of his accounts. Thankfully, my mom has access to her own accounts and could pay the most pressing bills; and Dad got better soon.
It’s not like I haven’t seen examples of this before. A few years ago, a good friend was quite ill with swine flu, and was intubated for over a month. (He recovered, thank goodness.) His new wife was stuck, seeing credit card bills coming in, but not having access to his checking account to pay them, nor the legal power to talk to his creditors while he was in the ICU.
I am not a lawyer–so for goodness’ sakes, do your own research (disclaimer: really, I’m not a lawyer, don’t rely on this post for important life decisions!)–but it seems to me there are two ways to prepare for this sort of emergency.
Shared accounts
Married couples who share all their accounts have some of this taken care of already. Spouse can’t pay the bills because he’s in the ICU? As long as you can find the check book, no problem. You can take care of it (in between sitting by your spouse’s hospital bed, fielding phone calls, and trying to catch the doctors when they round).
If you don’t share all the accounts, or have a mine-yours-ours setup, you may want to consider still having each other listed on the accounts. This gives your spouse access to, say, your checking account. You know, the one where your paycheck (or disability check) gets automatically deposited. Which he or she needs to pay the mortgage.
Of course, this assumes that you trust your spouse with your money. If you don’t, that might be a bigger problem than I can address today.
What if you aren’t married, though?
Power of Attorney
Get your ducks in a row with a Durable Power of Attorney. This empowers someone to do business on your behalf (sign papers, pay bills, accept payments) on your behalf.
This person can be your significant other, little sister, best friend who you trust to take care of your interests. The trick is to make sure you trust them and that they are willing to do this for you if needed.
Their power may be contingent on a doctor or two certifying you as incapacitated. If you are delirious, are you incapacitated? Probably. Hopefully not permanently.
A lawyer will draw this up for you, and seems to be pretty standard if you go to one to get a will (by standard, I mean: they’ll advise you to get one of these too).
I suspect this is especially useful if something very bad happens, and you won’t be able to manage business decisions for an extended period of time.
There is No power without knowledge
All of this discussion is for nothing, if your trusted agent (spouse, power of attorney) doesn’t know where your accounts are or what your bills should be.
In the olden days (say, the 1990s), things would quickly become obvious: bills would arrive in the mail, and probably also your bank statements. If you were out of action for a whole month, whoever was taking care of your mail could probably figure out 80% (a number I just pulled out of thin air) of what they needed to know.
Now, with electronic billing and accounts, you might not have a single envelope coming to your mailbox.
Good for the old-time identity thieves, bad for your spouse trying to keep your affairs in order.
This is a long-winded way of saying: your spouse or trusted representative needs to know all these things. Asking them to piece through your accounts while they are worried about you isn’t the best way to get things done.
A year or so ago, the personal finance blogosphere was full of posts about the ICE binder (link here, this is not an affiliate link). I don’t know that you need to buy a downloadable PDF, though I suspect it’s incredibly complete.
I do know that after dealing with my Dad’s illness, I heard a wake up call, since I handle all of the finances in the house. This fall it’s time for me to make a list for my husband. Just in case.
Do you have paperwork in order for your spouse or decision-maker? Do you ever talk about this stuff with your patients? If your doctor brought it up to you, would you freak out, or think she’s cool?