wrangling the bills

I don't know how often you sit down to have a gander at your own monthly budget, especially how much money goes out versus how much goes in. But if you do from time to time, you'll know just how many places your money goes. So since my mother never discussed her money with me, I had to play super sleuth to figure out just what companies I would have to contact, inform them that she had passed and find out what the next steps were. As I mentioned before, having the deceased's mail forwarded to you is a huge boon because obviously over time, people are going to want their money, right? It would have also been a great help to forward calls to my mother's home to my own, but I couldn't as my brother remained in the house for a long time after.

Medical bills began to appear first. My mother had just had some appointments with specialists and those came first, followed by some regular appointments (remember, there were no medical bills associated with her death as she was pronounced at home and transported directly to the fun home). I was amazed to discover that these required the least work, as almost all of them were forgiven by the specialists as in "oh no, we don't charge our patients who die, no!" I'm guessing it's a PR thing, you think? Like the cardiologist isn't going to demand payment of $6k from the family of a patient whose heart stopped, right? Lab services were a different matter and had to be paid. Speaking of medical issues, depending on your parent's coverage, you'll need to notify Medicaid/Medicare as well.

Next, decide what you're going to do about the residence. Every case has its own unique factors and mine is no exception. Everyone's perfect scenario is different and mine was to sell the house immediately and place the proceeds in the estate account for later disbursement (and to help pay my mother debts as needed). Alas, another roadblock was thrown in my face via the probate court. You may recall that I mentioned that the will was very specific about the powers and duties of the trustee were very specific, but it didn't matter as that portion was null and void. Unfortunately, the P&D of the PR/executor were outlined in a very brief fashion, one page to be exact. One would assume that the PR would have the same duties, but this is the law we're talking about folks, and you've heard that maxim about following things to the letter of the law? It held true in this situation as far as the court was concerned after a review by the judge herself. So in an ironically weird situation, I could do everything needed to settle my mother's business except for liquidating any of her real property.

Really? Seriously? And when would I be able to do that, exactly? Why, once you close the estate with the probate court. And when will that be? Why, no less than six months after the ad's been placed in the local newspaper announcing that the estate is open for debtors to show up and claim their payments which in my case would be no earlier than September. The house and everything in it would have to sit for awhile. A long while in my point of view. So now this meant that I'd be maintaining two households for at least a year (remember the slightly-diminished capacity sibling? Yes, well he needed somewhere to stay while things got started for his long-term care which he was pretty much pushing against). In my case, I had to keep all utilities going for the house and by the time I realized this, the homeowner's policy had lapsed and once it's lapsed, it's done for and you must purchase a new one which requires current photos of the home in question (add in extra trips to the homestead for me from the neighboring state). I really made the right decision to move back to the South from Michigan when I did because this would have been impossible to deal with from the Frozen North.

So, back to watching the mail. My mother was a periodicals subscribing fool, I tell you. I don't know where she found the time to read everything she was subscribed to and she was subbed to the widest range of stuff I think I've ever seen. Sister to Sister. Ebony. Jet. Us. OK. Guideposts. Ladies Home Journal. Better Homes & Gardens. Vibe. Reader's Digest. True Confessions. Oy. Turned out that most of it was through some clearing house package someone had told her she'd needed, so that made it easy to cancel most of them. But even the magazines wanted an original hard copy of the death certificate (don't forget to buy a LOT of stamps and those 11" by whatever privacy/brown envelopes).

You will also find that there are businesses that watch the announcements in the paper for estates or peruse the public court records in the Internet looking for PRs of estates to hit up with marketing materials. Estate sale companies. Gravestone artisans. Real estate companies. Missives ranging from brow-furrowing hand-scrawled notes to thoughtful printed letters to professional printed bulk drop rate cards. If any of the offers of assistance look interesting or you think you'll need them, by all means CHECK THEM OUT FIRST before you make that call. It's a fairly simple process, the main things is to check them out with the local Better Business Bureau and also see if you can find if the business in question pops up on any review sites with negative or positive feedback from former customers. Beware review sites with reviews from the actual company masked as customers to pump up their own ratings. These usually (but not always, of course) give themselves away as word-for-word duplicates on multiple sites.

Like I said before, death is a business and vendors will try to hose you if they can. This is a hard time, but you need to look out for yourself and whatever legacy your folks have left behind now more than ever because now it's only you standing between that legacy and the jackals.

Next: more flailing in the mail and how I railed against Southern etiquette.