Woman Issues PSA to Parents About Death Planning: “It'll Save Your Loved Ones So Much Time, Grief"

A woman says she's been unable to properly grieve after her mother's death because she had to snap into "business" mode and take care of all the financial loose ends the woman didn't tie up while she was still alive.

Katie (@badwitch1126) uploaded a viral TikTok stating that she's got an important PSA to anyone with kids by sharing her personal anecdote about the unexpected passing of her mother, and how she is in a position of having to take care of certain legal and bureaucratic things in the wake of her death she says that ultimately could have been avoided.

The first thing she said that anyone with kids should do is ensure that they contact their bank and have their children set as PODs, which stands for "payable on death." This allows them unfettered access to a parents' financials in the wake of their passing (this works for spouses or whoever else is listed as a POD as well).

She says that doing this will make a "huge difference" but then went on to discuss retirement accounts "or your 401k or whatever it is, make sure that you have a beneficiary on those accounts. Now my brother and I were lucky, it was the only bit of good news we've gotten in this entire process is that when my mom retired she had to put beneficiaries."

As a result this stipulation, she and her brother didn't have to worry about staking their claim to their mother's retirement fund; however, there were problems associated with this, too, because their mom didn't update their address on her retirement documents. "So it wasn't until I called the retirement company that I found out they had already sent us packets for the beneficiary dispersement but they sent them to the wrong addresses."

The only reason she found this out was because she called the retirement company. She tells everyone with any type of retirement plan or POD information that they should ensure all of the beneficiaries' personal information is updated in whatever system they've got set up.

Katie said that by doing this, folks can ensure that their living descendants won't have to worry about going into probate in order to "wait a year, year and a half" in order to get their assets in order.

She said that it's important for folks to have "hard conversations" with their kids and to let them know where the "important documents are" along with passwords to computers, bank accounts, etc.

The TikToker went on to say that while nobody really wants to have that conversation of "hey if I die this is what needs to happen" it is nonetheless an important conversation for folks to have with their children: "My brother and I were left having no idea what to do. We are learning as we go and it is awful."

She went on to say that she has "no idea" if her mom has life insurance because there's "no database" informing her if they do or don't. "You can't just go to a website and find out if somebody had life insurance. You have to call those specific companies give them all of the information and see if they had a policy."

Katie says that it's not like the company is going to reach out to beneficiaries in the event of a client's death because it's not like they're in a rush to pay out on those policies in the first place. She said that her and her brother "paid $5,000 for a funeral out of pocket because as far as [they] knew their mother didn't have life insurance."

"And if she did, she didn't tell us and we have no idea who it's through."

Katie said that because her mom was "predictable" and used the same passwords for years, she was able to log into her computer and access a lot of her personal information.

She stressed that people in one's family should know this information or have access to it in the event of their death before stressing the importance of establishing a "trust" for their kids no matter how little they have. This way when someone passes they can bypass the "probate" process and having to get lawyers involved when it comes to divvying up assets.

In the case of Katie and her brother, their probate process is extremely straightforward — they've agreed to split everything 50/50. However, she states that this doesn't really matter and they still have a lot of obstacles to jump over in order to "get through" probate so they can "access assets, funds ... all of that will not be in our possession for a very long time."

Katie said that she inherited her mother's debt, effectively, and that she and her brother are currently having to go through the process of selling their mother's home so she can pay off her mortgage, which is why she wants "ownership" of her departed mother's assets in order "to be able to deal" with settling her mom's debts.

"Contact a lawyer, ask them about setting up a trust. It is going to save your loved ones so much time, so much grief, so much money, it's going to make it so much easier on them when they are already going through one of the worst things they will ever go through."

Katie stated that due to the stress of having to deal with all of these financial issues after her mother died, that she "feel[s] like [she] ha[s]n't been allowed to grieve ... because [she] immediately had to go into business mode."

Ultimately her PSA is to make sure that no one else goes through what she and her brother have to go through.

"All of us could be gone tomorrow," she says, a sobering, urgent plea for those to set up a trust.