I have had another breakdown, over the phone this time whilst trying to do things the correct way, spent quite some time explaining this and that and not knowing where to start…The changeover and notifications to the tax office then the pensions office , nothing was sinking in of what i was being asked to do, and now soon having to pay back the monies granted to top up my state pension as i will not be entitled to these now that a certain payment i have been granted is being paid to me, lump sum backkdated then monthly, and of course the new tax code and tax stoppage to be taken…I had been temporarily placed on the emergency tax but now been issued an updated tax code…I dont know whether i am coming or going…I just want to get on with what is left of my life, as expected this stress is causing me MS exacerbation’s, I can hardly walk…what a palaver, what a minefield…This is just going to be making me more ill… Why is death so complicated to sort out the bits and pieces after our loved ones have died, it is enough to have to deal with a funeral director and solicitor but it doesn’t stop there…
How we can look back in life, just the two us without any cares in the world…well apart from a choice of where shall we go over this Bank Holiday was as complicated as it ever got, our decision making…I still cant believe that our carefree life, the places we visited, the things we done has come to its abrupt and final end…I am still looking for him to walk through the front door carrying his bags of shopping or walking in with the dogs…
Our life was so free and uncomplicated…basically we just lived, no health issues, no money worries…just the two of us and our three dogs, what more could one ever have wanted…
Since i lost Richard i have had help from the CAB and Age UK to get top ups to my monthly income that i am entitled to only for now i have been awarded something i was told that i had a good chance of getting, well i have gotten it, a benefiting plus, only for more complications of stopping the others and having to pay back and now the tax and more forms, proofs and photocopying of proof of which i have to wait till my next months statement so this could drag on a few months before all becomes stable, i just want to get on with this selling and uprooting…even something came from the solicitor the other day when i thought we had wrapped it up…how much more can anyone take…we are all dealing with our loss, our grief, finances and our future…
Jackie, I think that the problem is that the people on the other end of the phone are trained to be robots… Like everyone else I had to deal with all the paperwork. I thought it would be easy for me as I was quite capable of dealing with the admin. The months went by and although I was coping it seemed never ending as I had to start chasing incompetence. I received a lump sum from one of my husbands pensions but the tax office took a slice of it. I have now received most of it back. The bank took forever as did investments and that’s when I became stressy. I did receive written apologies from both by the way when I started to make waves which made them jump into action. I was capable of knowing what to do and say but what about people who don’t.
I thought it had all come to an end, well you do after over a year but I am now suddenly being pestered by Paypal. I don’t think he ever used it though. I informed them this week that he had passed away and I wanted the account closed. They replied to me twice but addressed it to Brian. I sent another strong e-mail wondering what they didn’t understand about he had passed away. I have now received another e-mail telling me I have to prove his death by sending a Death certificate to Luxembourg. I have no intention of sending one as his Credit card has been destroyed and will ignore all e-mails they might send. I tried to be polite and do it the right way. Why has everything got to be so difficult.
xxxx
Pat…
…all this has now left me wondering of who is going to take care of my business when i am gone, who is capable, who do i make as executor…I will have to add to my will once i get back home…I had made Richard give me his promise that he would take care of me and my ashes, he would have done so… I had always assumed i would go first, not Richard…
You know what, we should still all be out enjoying our life with our beloveds, not making plans for our own funerals…how life can change in the flicker of an eye…
Dear sheila Alans pension went to his first wife as he and i weren’t married but i still had to do the paperwork. I have drawn my private pension but still have to get my state pension which i have deferred so that will be more paperwork. Dealing with his bank accounts was a bit of a nightmare and most of the energy bills were in his name as was national trust, english heritage and camping and caravan club all made more difficult because we didn’t share the same surname. He also had an isa. The things most difficult for me was car and motorhome tax and insurance. It was all alien to me but i had no help from family so did it on my own. It wasn’t straight forward for either of them as they are sorned and i had to find special insurances for them. Then one of the insurance companies when i rang them up to tell them there were some mistakes on the policy then said sorry we will have to give you a full refund as we can’t do what you want, although day before said they could. No explanation so i had to look for someone else to do a laid up policy. So how i’m expected to know what i’m doing when they don’t is beyond me. Then there was the change of ownership on both vehicles log books. The refunds of any payments from when he’d passed away. Same with the house insurance. Now its trying to sell my motorhome which needs a good clean but its all such a worry. But the worst thing of all was a few months before alan was taken ill something dawned on me that he hadn’t been paid out on an insurance i had taken out on him and the maturity date for it was march 2017. We both set about looking through bank statements just to check. We couldn’t find any payment so alan phoned them up in manchester. Apparentely it had been taken over by some other firm. She asked alan some questions then wanted to speak to me as i had taken it out. She asked for my address and when i told her she said that doesn’t match up with what i have here. So had i lived anywhere else. I said yes thirty two years ago so gave her that address. That wasn’t what she had either. I said is that my fault you haven’t got the right address. He has paid that money without fail for the ladt 15 years so because you have the wrong address thats it. She told alan to write a letter to them explaining with the address where we lived. So he did and we posted it by registered delivery. Meanwhile he became poorly and we hadn’t heard back and he just said we will leave it until after Christmas now. So we did but he became worse but he did tell me on one of the days when he was compos mentis that it was altogether in a folder in his drawer. Only after he had passed away did i contact them again just to be told the same thing. I told them we had sent a letter as instructed but they said they hadn’ t received it. I told them i would write one more then i would be seeing a solicitor if it wasn’t sorted. I tracked the letter and it had gone to same place as the first one so i thought they hadn’t received it but they had as it had gone to one of their sorting offices, but it still took them forever. I think they must have lost 1st letter being as it went to same place. If we hadn’t suddenly realised one day that alan hadn’t been paid out for that insurance we would never have got it. Sadly alan didn’t as he had passed away by then. We have always had trouble with insurances i.e. when other people have run into vehicles we have owned while parked outside our house then the hassle you get from the companies. Insurances have always been the bain of our lives. Janet x
If there is any consolation for me, at least on the plus side i can come well away from those words of " means tested…" oh how i hate living like that, so degrading…Several years ago i worked very briefly at the benefits agencies fraud department where i have found myself in my earlier days on both sides of the counter, ie, being in employment and being out of work or in between jobs, oh the form fillings, the books to fill in, if number nine does not apply you can skip to number 15, but not to worry there are another 30 pages of the book to go…all just to get what one is told we can apply for, and not forgetting to send them our current bank statements for all to see what goes in and what goes out, talk about our privacy being taken away from us…well thankfully i can now come off the means tested things i had recently been given since the sudden loss of my Richard…
I guess i can class myself as a control freak, i need to be in control… i do not take kindly when given help when i am told to follow orders and i have no idea of what i am doing but going along with what i am told to do just to get an entitlement…the pages of confidential to me photocopying as proof, my bank statements even my Richards bank statements I have found myself apologising to him for doing this to him but i was under orders that this was what they were requiring from me…
Janet…
… like you, me and my Richard were not a married couple although he referred to me as " the wife…"
Hi Sheila, We never used e-bay but I have no paperwork re Paypal as I didn’t know he had an account in fact don’t think he ever used it. I managed to get an e-mail to their bereavement dept and they sent two e-mails asking for a Death Certificate both addressed to Brian. My replies were not polite and when a third one arrived today I have made it clear that as they have confirmed that the account is now closed and his card was returned to the bank over a year ago so no longer used anyway as far as I am concerned the matter is closed and I have no intention of purchasing another Death Cert to send to Luxembourg… They also said that the e-mails would still come through as they are automated!!!
Pat xxx
Jackie, I am with you all the way and absolutely understand where you are coming from. Like you I don’t like things being done for me nor do I like being treated like an idiot and like to be in control. I am a private person and would rather starve than beg and hate having to give private details.
The form filling and telephoning really got me down in the end although I am trained in admin. Dealing with such stupid people or is it me being too demanding when I want just a bit of competence on the other end of the phone.
What shocked me was the solicitor that was holding Brian’s will. A nice man came to my house and came with the will and said I had nothing to worry about but I didn’t know that he wrote to the bank and asked for all Brian’s money to be sent to his firm. Thankfully the week before Brian died he made his account a joint one but he had ISA’s. Fortunately I passed on the funeral invoice to the bank to pay and this was paid out before the solicitor got hold of the rest. I didn’t know about any of this and was chasing this account for months before someone at the Bank informed me of what they had done. The solicitor never informed me either. The bill they charged came to exactly the amount of money they had got hold of, what a co-incidence!!! As it was a relatively small amount I couldn’t be bothered to argue but I did write a strong complaint to the Bank asking who gave them permission to pass on money to just anyone that wanted to get their hands on it. I had an apology and a large hamper sent to me. But I felt let down by someone I should have been able to trust along with the solicitor.
Pat xxx
I used the councils’ tell us once’ service. It was only when I received a rebate on my car tax did I realise that I had been driving round in an untaxed car. Then there was Spotify, trying to find out out how to cancel that, working out passwords that were not recorded anyway. Tapping away at the computer using different connotations of our pets names . Ladies, M15 should recruit us. We have achieved the almost impossible at times and , I include all the men in this too, we will come out the other side.
Also, I only found out through a friend that I was entitled to a death benefit and a monthly payment until my husband would have been 65. This information needs to be more widely available.
Hi I did the same as you with Paypal. I was putting in all the passwords to try and get in, I thought I had cracked it when I managed it only to find they wanted a security number and that wasn’t something I had a clue about didn’t even know he had a paypal account. After hours of searching and dead ends I managed to get into a Bereavement e-mail address and explained that he died over a year ago, which I thought was easy enough to understand. I have since received four e-mails still addressed to Brian asking him for a death certificate, sick or what… I have managed to cancel the account although his card is no longer in existence anyway so why would they still want me to send a Death Cert to an address in Luxembourg. And then to inform me that I will still receive e-mails as they are automated. Will just have to ignore them. It’s a minefield and I have come to hate technology. I’m sure everything was simpler years ago when you could speak to a person that spoke English or even a human and they had a brain. I tried to find out some information from Pensions and was passed onto five different numbers until I eventually ended up back at the number I had first tried and then I couldn’t understand a word the woman was saying. I gave up.
This adds to our problems doesn’t it.
Pat xxx
Back home way back before we moved i had begged Richard to write in a notebook all companies, all utilities, all banks, our alarm system, our plumbers, well just about all the information i would need if anything ever happened to him as he was the person who completely took over the running’s, the finances, the paying of bills, everything…well he did eventually but he never updated it after we moved, infact it was not even up to date…so hence one of my first problems was notifying all concerned after his death…well all this along with arranging Richards cremation service, and our joint solicitor 140 plus miles away back home, and everything else we have to now deal with is enough for anyone who is in mourning to have to deal with without taking is toll on ones health…To say these past nine months have been literally a nightmare come true, and i still have a way to go before completions, is an understatement, and next i will have to be facing a move at some point…Whatever has happened to my life, i dont recognise it any more, i dont even recognise myself as i am not the person i once was, i am now a broken woman, a lost soul…call it what you will, as i have posted before and like many of us, i-we are alive, but we are not living, just surviving without our loved ones by our side…Not long ago i was one of our world couples, now i am back to square one, a single…being a single is now the loneliest place ever to be, and more so when like me, i am dealing with my own debilitating illness-disease…
Montague…
…so sorry to read but, i just noticed the date your hubby died was the day after i lost my Richard 11th April 2019, suddenly at age 74, he would have been 75 in two days time…I still cant believe he has gone, gone forever, it is so hard coming to terms with the reality…
Sheila and All…
… just come off the phone again after contacting two companies trying to take myself off of what i was previously awarded but, neither now not entitled to, nor not needing to stay on by me but, oh the rigmarole, and still a waiting period well i have agreed and given my consent to place on hold-freeze and to just stop the other, the other by the way needed confirmation from the other one, the freeze - on hold one before they could-would take me off, but told i would have to send a letter in confirmation that i want to totally come off…Of course i will now have to pay back the months i was granted it, the same for the other one, all this because i have been granted a backdated, then monthly Richards Vauxhall pension… oh why must our lives become so complicated, and dont even get me started on the menus…no not food menus, these ones come from my landline phone…
Yes the stoppage was on emergency tax but the other days phone call gave me my new updated tax code which i feel they will be paying some of this back to me now they have given me the near monthly figure i will be receiving…
Sheila, hm, never thought of that, " the cooling off period ." the long empty period when everything to do with the loss of our partner is all done and dusted, and that changeover period, this is when it will be hitting us the most, the nothing to do and the final reality of our loved one, our partner has gone forever, well not gone from us, our heart but all the financial side that was being transferred from one to the other…I have told my Richard that none of this matters, his home, his money, if he just comes back i would happily give it all back to him…just please come back and take it…
I feel so guilty that I am the survivor, as my Richard from the day we met a couple of years before we got engaged and set up our forever home looked after me, he was a provider even though he didn’t need to be at the time we first started dating…there was not one selfish bone in his body…The reason i am feeling so bad is that even this home, the money, everything in this home came from his money yet we weren’t Mr and Mrs on paper…I want him back so he can benefit from what is rightfully his…his money, his home,…I feel i have taken everything that is rightfully his…I just want him to come back and take it all back…
I also qualified for Bereavement payment ( lump sum) and then Bereavement Support Allowance as I was under pension age, my husband was 66, had his state pension in payment for 16 months.
BSA is paid for 18 months, at a much reduced rate than its predecessor, and subject to scrutiny by the Govt Select Committee. Sue Ryder were active in giving evidence and put links on for members to get advice.
It is indeed an nightmare to deal with finances. I was fortunate as I had been a financial adviser in Social Housing and we offered bereavement visits. This ensured we gave much needed advice that helped our customers to navigate a very complicated system. I am planning to work with a local charity to offer this service by training up volunteers and to monitor case work. At some point I will do visits myself.