I have spent most of today trying to sort sadmin. It has been a very sad and non-productive day. I feel inadequate and frustrated because I know he would have been so much better at this. I have been sitting at the kitchen table, phone in hand, surrounded by paperwork. My head hurt and I was getting shaky and breathless so I went outside and sat on the garden bench for a few minutes.
I don’t believe in feathers, rainbows and robins being signs. I live down a country lane where the farmer shoots pigeons and has pheasant shoots and regularly see foxes.
I counted 30 feathers on my lawn.
I have been grumbling to my husband all day that I have been left with all this crap to sort out and asking for some help.
I seem to remember someone here saying that they just try and sort out one thing each day. I am finding it all a bit overwhelming. I asked the solicitor to apply for Probate because I just couldn’t deal with that alongside everything else, but it is still me that has to do a lot of the slogging, visiting or contacting banks and organisations. How is everyone else managing?
I made lists of all bills and companies that needed contacting and went to their bereavement service but we were joint in just about everything. I got my solicitor to contact the banks and do probate. I have a financial advisor who did all the pension stuff and did an excellent job getting really good deals for me on annuities but we had been with him for over 20 years. I think it helped that I was a project manager before I retired and my specialty was accounts. From the posts on here I can see I had it easy. I advise all couples I come across to put everything joint. If you find yourself in the unhappy situation it does make things easier.
Don’t stress. Make a list and go through the list most important first.
Good luck
I have been wading through it for a week and the rest will have to wait. I made lists too and did the most important things first but I did have family to help. The eulogy took me a long time so the less important things have still to be sorted. I’ve done the essentials and now the funeral is tomorrow.
Its taken me forever! Every company i’ve been in touch with seem to want different things, and I’m sick of filling in forms.
It’s not been helped by the fact that my husband’s filing system was known only to him! I’m waiting for the sadmin to be finalised, and I’m creating a system that works for me. I can find the utility bills for when we moved in here about 25 years ago (he never threw anything away), but no sign of last year. I guess he did everything online. Another of my pet hates - give me paper!
Have to admit I put it all in a drawer and ignore it, send me to prison if you like, don’t care anymore. Wouldn’t recommend it as a course of action though, I know I need to face it sometime. Just hoping I’ll go to sleep and not wake up before that time comes.
I couldn’t agree more. He was an IT instructor at a college. If something could be done online, he did. I have found three A4 pages of login passwords. Everything from banking to Fitbit apps. Things were much simpler with a piggy bank, a building society book and a cheque book.
I feel like a Luddite and a dinosaur.
The last site I had to navigate wanted me to prove I am not a robot! Ffs. I wish I was a robot, they don’t have hearts, let alone broken ones. Xx
I’ve done most of the banking , pensions, life insurance etc and was going to apply for confirmation myself but just couldn’t face it, so I met with a solicitor today and they are going to do it and then also I will write a new will.
Everything that I needed to do had some error by companies - except when I wanted to pay off the mortgage - funnily that was very smooth when I was giving them money !!!
I just did one thing at a time and waited till it was complete before I started something new. Still have to change over the sky account but can’t face that yet.
It does seem everlasting and these companies are truly awful at what they do even though they have dedicated bereavement departments.
Oh and I’m still arguing with the tax man and have a tax return for my husband for this year - and then will need to do another one for him next year …….
Funny that. You have to wait ages for some things because they need Probate/death certificates/bloody forms and declarations/ marriage certificates/a copy of the will, etc. Yet the state pension and private pensions stop immediately.
I wonder how that works.
Xx
I handed over my husbands will to the solicitor today and had to apologise as it looked quite worn and battered . Only because it has been sent to so many institutions who had to have a look at it !!!
I got a death certificate returned, sliced in half by a letter opening machine. No good to anyone else now.
Bastards has become my most-used word now.
Xx
Good luck with Sky. I phoned to tell them my husband had died. They said they wanted to talk to the account holder. I explained again that he was dead. But they still wanted to speak to him. I asked if they had a Medium on their team, because I would quite like to speak to speak to my husband myself. Idiots. Xx
That sounds about right doesn’t it !!
Beggars belief.
I just want it all done now as it stresses me out no end, but at the same time it breaks my heart that his name will be erased from everything we both owned together.
Hope you rest well tonight willow. Xx
@Willow112 I wish Jim had left me pages of passwords. Ive spent ages trying to get into the laptop because I want to use it. We used it together just before he died, but i didnt write down the password because Jim would be there to tell me - right! ive a few more things to try cos i wont be beaten.
@Cab i did the shove it in a box and ignore it. It worked for a while, and then i got a guilty conscience so started dealing with it all. Only small amounts at a time though and once i started getting overwhelmed I just stopped. As you say So Sue Me!
@roni52 i feel just like that too. I want it all sorted out now, its been going on for too long. Im sure Jim thought I would put it in the hands of a solicitor. Wrong! I read all the stuff and thought ‘I can do this’ l’m certain this is why its taken me so long. I wish I’d used a
solicitor from the start. I’m just waiting for the Probate people or HMRC to come back and tell me I’ve done it all wrong!
Oh yes, and I too feel so sad that I’m just erasing him from everything we have.
I found Sky really helpful but once again I believe we were joint. The lovely lady looked for every discount she could find without me asking. My bank was truly lovely. A week after he died I got a scam call. Due to my state of mind I just wasn’t sure. I phoned the bank who assured me it was a scam and when the young man on the call heard my situation he sent me a bouquet of flowers from the bank. They are not all heartless bastards. I could also afford an accountant to sort out his tax. Normally I have no problem with this but there was one off shore investment I had never dealt with before so let the professionals handle it. It proved worth while. I had calculated what I thought the tax would be but didn’t know about an allowance which reduced it significantly.
My husband was a major techie, he worked in IT from 1983 until he retired in 2019, so things he dealt with were all on line which of course means having to work out passwords! I’m still unable to get into his laptop and his part of the desk top computer because I can’t work out his passwords, he was always changing them and never, ever wrote them down! Think I need to find a “hacker”!!
Oh goodness, you have my sympathies. At least Jim set up a password and that was it. I still cant find lots of his photos so I think must be ‘on the Cloud’ and lost forever.
The problems we are all having with all this online business shows to me that its not a good idea.
BTW if you find a good ‘hacker’ i’m sure we could use their skills! 
I worked myself up so much about Sky and kept putting off ringing them, but in the end l had to. And the person l ended up speaking to was absolutely great, l didn’t even have to send a copy of my darling’s death certificate, they simply changed things over into my name. Probably one of those cases where it depends who picks the phone up at the other end. No comfort for anyone who ends up speaking to a jobsworth, l know, but some of them are okay x
I did the bank myself, and they were really helpful and kind. Left the rest to the solicitor. The worst was American Express, who kept on sending ‘pay us back or else’ notifications even after receiving the death certificate! So I got the solicitor on to them. Tell Us Once did the rest. But not complicated, as he didn’t have life insurance or private pension, and everything was left to his daughter.