3 Things I Learned From My Mom’s Sudden Passing

As some of our readers may know, we had our firstborn on December 1^st, 2020. To everyone’s complete shock, my mom was also diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on the same day. After 3 months of intensive treatment and care, unfortunately we still could not beat the illness, and she passed on March 4^th, 2021. While this is extremely painful, we didn’t have the luxury to grieve – because urgent estate matters must be settled immediately after her passing. Like most people, she did not want to think about passing away and did not make any estate plans – which unfortunately added a lot more complexities and difficulties afterwards. To help our readers avoid the same, here are 3 things I learned from my mom’s sudden passing:

 

1. Will and Funeral Pre-Planning are crucial

The first thing to handle after a loved one’s passing is the funeral. To our shock, even a minimalistic funeral arrangement cost around $30,000.00 (and we asked around a lot). We were lucky to have around that much in savings, but we know many of our clients’ money would be tied up in their debts, investments, and/or real estate. As well, until certain things happen (discussed further below), beneficiaries and executors cannot even access estate funds to pay for funeral expenses, leading to the very difficult situation of delaying the funeral and burial.

 

Funeral homes are scrutinized by the government – they must ensure the person giving instructions for funeral arrangements indeed has authority to do so. Without a valid Will, it’d be difficult to determine this. Lets take a simple example: let’s say Joan have two children – Mike and Lauren, and she passed without a Will. At the funeral home, Mike wants to have a burial whereas Lauren wants to have a cremation for their deceased mom. Until the funeral home have clear indication who has authority to make this decision – the funeral and burial arrangements would put on hold. Without a Will, the two children would need to apply for Certificate of Appointment of Estate Trustee from the Courts, which would take around 15 days if all documents are properly filed, but can take much longer if there are documents missing or if there is contestation, such as two people fighting to be the executor.

 

This delay can be easily avoided if Joan has a valid Will appointing executor (she can appoint both children as executor but also have a dispute resolution process in place if they disagree), or if she has made prior funeral pre-planning with the funeral home. She could have also pre-paid the funeral and burial expenses to avoid such stalls.

 

2. Set up some assets to be automatically transferred

In most cases, the beneficiaries and executors must go apply for probate before they can access the deceased’s assets, such as bank accounts, real estate, investments, corporate funds, etc. As probate may take at least 15 days, it’s good to set up some assets to be transferred automatically and immediately upon one’s passing. Those assets may include:

 

1. Any assets jointly owned with the beneficiaries – such as real estate held as “joint tenants” (will say so on your deed); joint bank accounts; joint investment accounts;
2. Any assets with a specified beneficiary – most commonly insurance policies – note that it must specifically identify a beneficiary, such as Mike and Lauren, and not just say “my children” (as that may require more documents such as birth certificates and an investigation to find out all of the deceased’s children)

 

The good thing is, those assets are also exempt from estate administration tax, which are collected for estate values above $50,000 ($15 per $1,000 of the estate).

 

3. Do NOT wait until the last minute to do your Wills and POAs

Whenever Will and POAs are completed with law firms, the responsible lawyer must access the executor’s “capacity” – as in, did Joan have the mental capacity to make a Will? Is she still logical and coherent? If Joan is not, then most law firms would refuse to take on the case due to legal liability. Even if the Will and POAs were able to be completed in this state, it can be easily contested later. Recently, unfortunately we had to refuse some estate cases from potential clients who were clearly not logical and coherent when contacting us.

 

POAs are power of attorneys that enable loved ones to handle one’s financial and health care matters while one is still alive. This is essential because during a loved one’s last years, months, and days, they may not have the capacity to pay bills, manage real estate and investments, or select health care and treatment options. But without valid POAs, there will be many difficulties and delays when their loved ones try to take over for them.

 

The good thing about setting up POAs early is that people like Joan can also dictate how she wants her financial and health care matters to be managed while she is still of sound mind.

 

Conclusion

Dealing with the illness and passing of a loved one is the hardest thing for many people, including us and our clients. Unfortunately, this can be made even more difficult without an advance estate plan. Our Real Estate – Wills & Estates practice is designed exactly for families in those situations, and we wish to make those painful situations better and more manageable. We invite you to book an initial free consultation with Varity Law to discuss your estate matters.

 

In memory of my mom:

Li Ping (Christine) Tan

Mom, Grandma, Entrepreneur

 

You will always be remembered and loved.

Until we meet again in heaven.

 

 

Yi Dan (Sabrina) Ding is the Owner & Principal Lawyer at Varity Law Prof. Corp, which provide Real Estate – Wills & Estates law services to its family clients, and Business Law – Business Immigration law services to its business clients. Combining a client-centric and professional approach, she has won many immigration approvals and resolved many difficult real estate situations, while providing practical legal services to clients at reasonable costs.