The call came late in the day as I was getting ready to leave the office.
"Hello Art" the caller started, "My name is Mr. X and you are my daughter's financial planner. I think you know she has been ill lately. I am calling to let you know that her funeral was late last week. I am her executor. Do you have any idea what assets she owned and where they are?" A call like that does not end the day well.
I met his daughter just five years ago at a class I present occasionally for the Urbandale Parks & Rec department. She was 40 years old when I met her. Divorced with full custody of a 15 year old son and a steady job with a State agency, her goals were related to retirement planning and education for her son. Over the course of several meetings we established her retirement needs and goals, allocated resources to meet those goals, and started saving for her son's education. As part of the analysis we reviewed her insurance coverage. The state provided excellent health and disability insurance but only a minimal amount of life insurance. I encouraged her to consider purchasing life insurance to supplement the coverage the state provided. Thankfully she not only listened, but she followed my advice.
It is hard for me to accept that within 5 years, this active healthy woman went from easily qualifying for life insurance… to dead.
In her situation she saw it coming. Knowing she was quite ill, we met 18 months ago to review her beneficiaries. I recommended she meet with an estate planning attorney to review her will. These are the action items you can accomplish if your doctor delivers news of the worst kind. At that point, it would have been impossible to purchase additional life insurance.
In the last year I know of a man in his late 30's who had a mild heart attack; a woman in her mid 40's who is currently in radiation and chemotherapy for cancer; and a man in his early 50's who was hospitalized twice for pancreatitis before his gallbladder was removed last month. Fortunately for all three of these individuals, their prognosis is good but their ability to purchase additional insurance has been seriously curtailed. Two years ago, none of them knew this would happen.
I share this so that we can all learn from the moral of the story. It is better to plan for the worst and hope for the best, than it is to plan for the best and worry about the worst.
For Mr. X and his family, there is nothing I can do to relieve their loss nor was there anything I could have done to prevent this. I can take some solace in the knowledge that I did the best I could for his daughter. I do have a comprehensive list of her assets, I know what she owned and where to find it, I am working with him and the attorney to make sure her final wishes are carried out, and she passed knowing that her planning provided for her son and his education. Given the situation, I don't know how this could have ended any better.
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