Delean: Do your survivors a favor – don’t leave them in a mess

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If you died or were incapacitated, and people went through your dresser, closets, and private papers, what would they discover about you that they might not know? What would they consider valuable, if anything? Who would they contact to share the news?

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It’s uncomfortable to watch, but it happens to everyone over time.

And you’ll be doing your loved ones a favor by making the process easier for them.

One of the ways is to clear the clutter on your own, avoiding trouble for your survivors. Do you really need every letter received from that long-ago love interest? Income tax returns dating from your first job? Clothes from another decade that you’ll never fit in again?

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Another is to prepare a detailed and comprehensive list of what you have, what you owe, who you pay and when (with account numbers attached), what is valuable and what can be dispensed with, plus full names and addresses of your friends, service providers and professionals. or business people you deal with regularly.

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Local financial advisor Catherine Rahal, author of a new book titled If You Love Them, Leave Them Lists (available on Amazon and on their website) catherinerahal.com ), calls it “creating your roadmap,” so others have some idea of ​​how to close your final chapter cleanly and with minimal fuss.

One of the book’s inspirations was his late brother-in-law, who had the foresight to prepare an inherited notebook for his family before his death.

Rahal understood the importance of the gesture, as she lost her husband suddenly in a plane fire that claimed the lives of 23 passengers after an emergency landing at the Cincinnati airport in 1983. He was 37 years old, she was 33 and they had just moved to Quebec. from United States.

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“There is no better gift for you, for those who will care for you and for those you will eventually leave behind, than this roadmap,” he said.

“You may think that your family knows everything about you, but that is not always the case.”

It is up to you to fill in the blanks.

“And the things that you don’t want others to see, you have to get rid of while you can,” he said.

Rahal remembers cleaning the house of a friend who had made her a liquidator and finding a collection of love letters from a (married) man. She asked him if he wanted them back; he refused, so they were crushed.

“The things that matter to you may mean nothing to someone else,” he said. “Our children generally don’t want our things. They have already furnished their nests ”.

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Preparing your affairs in the event of death or disability is not a grim exercise.

“I’ve always been amazed at how many people don’t want to talk about life insurance or make a will,” Rahal notes in the book. “Writing a will does not mean that you will die tomorrow. Buying insurance will not hasten its demise. “

Intentionally or not, most people today also leave a fingerprint that should be erased as much as possible. Rahal cites the example of a man whose photo kept popping up on an online dating website a couple of weeks after it appeared in his newspaper obituary. If no one notifies the site that you have left, you may be staying there for a while. “You may be looking for love long after you’ve gone to the afterlife,” he said.

The Montreal Gazette invites readers to ask questions about taxes, investments, and personal finance matters. If you have a query that you would like to address, please email it to Paul Delean at [email protected]