Nobody discusses changing names on everything

[Donna7431]

Yesterday was the Seven month anniversary date. Still in shock, yet I am managing. I have no children or family other than a demented mother. There are two good friends and my sister in law to help me cope. One of the tougher parts of this journey has been getting names, emails changed on everything. Nobody has discussed this. Everybody wants a death certificate. My husband had my name on some things, but not all. This has created havoc. If I have one word of advice for newlywed women, get your name on everything. I just didn't care. He just handled it. I was left ignorant of the state of many things. Surprised by others. Dealing with this on top of everything else has been huge. Has any other woman gone through this? Changing names on everything has become a full time job. And I need to do this to avoid any issues in the future. Don't want to have to keep on showing his death certificate in years to come.  And like I need to establish my new identity. Thoughts?

[JenC]

I haven't taken my husbands name off most things yet but we had almost everything in both our names.  I did though go to the bank and have his credit card cancelled and get our mortgage and line of credit taken care of.  He had a savings account that they just transferred the money out of and put it in our joint account and then closed all the accounts he had.  He has only been gone for a little over 3 months now though so I'm sure it will all get done eventually.  It is difficult though to take them off things I find.  It just makes it a little bit more real everytime and I find that really hard to accept.

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Changing names.

 

Or removing her name from things. We had a long time to plan for the end it turned out but we didn’t know it when we started to get our affairs in order. We were advised to get a “Living trust”. And in doing so most of our assets were transferred into the trust before she passed. But there were still some accounts that couldn't be transferred until after her death. Doing the remainder of the accounts took almost a year because I chose to take on one at a time. I had over a dozen death certificates and that almost wasn’t enough. I was advised to get an accountant to help with 401ks and such. Instead I got an investor and together moved the accounts in a manner to conform to the tax laws. The investor didn’t charge what an accountant would have, just saying. It was difficult to remove her name from the PO box , and I still receive mail (credit card offers) to this day in her name(over a year now).  So yes , every time I had to prove she was dead it was like picking off a scab to deep wound.

It hurts but you have to go through it, sorry.

 

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[KMB]

Donna, I am sorry you have to deal with changing accounts, name changes, etc. It is all necessary, but it feels agonizing, like dumping salt into a wound. My husband and I had  everything set up jointly.  A few things were a priority, such as an IRA ( for tax purposes) and our credit card account. I took my time with the rest and I still have a couple of accounts that need to have my husband's name removed but I am in no rush. I would totally lose it with every change. Even terminating his cell phone service had me in a crying mess. I feel like the world wants to obliterate my husband's existence completely. Irrational, I know, because I have his love, our photos , memories and his personal belongings to prove he was here. There is nothing rational about this loss of ours we are forced to cope with.

[Francine]

Donna7431

10 minutes ago, KMB said:

I took my time with the rest and I still have a couple of accounts that need to have my husband's name removed but I am in no rush. I would totally lose it with every change. Even terminating his cell phone service had me in a crying mess.

Like JenC, and KMB, my husband and I had literally everything in both our names so lucky I didn't have that problem.  I like seeing his name on our accounts so I'm not ready to take his name off the account.  On one account, in order to have the children as beneficiaries, I would need to take his name off because both signatures were required.  But again, I'm in no hurry.

[M88]

I found closing and changing bank accounts the most difficult,  the most heartbreaking.   I had a meltdown and thankfully the young woman was very patient and understanding.    

I thought I'd unsubscribed from all hubby's on-line groups and got a shock when a few Happy Birthday emails came through last week. 

 

 

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1 hour ago, M88 said:

on-line groups

M88, my wife had all kinds of online accounts she was getting like sixty e-mails a day from Group on, Kohls and places like that. It took me several months to unsubscribe from all the services she had signed up on. I didn't want to cancel her email accounts cause I didn't want to miss anything. I couldn't close her Facebook account didn't want to miss anything people were posting, nice things. She was the social hub of our family. I don't even have a Facebook account to this day. She was incredible, I don't know how she did it all.

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[KayC]

Donna,

It's very individual how people handle this.  I had a husband that I included his name on everything because I wanted to make it easier in case I died...well he turned out to be a con that preyed on me, had no intention of having a normal marriage, didn't live with me, used my credit to the tune of $57,000.00, then quit his job and went into hiding with a younger woman.  I couldn't un-entangle myself from him fast enough!  However, that was NOT how it was with my dear sweet husband that died...with him I did need to cough up death certificates and pay title transfer fees on vehicles, etc.  We had a shared email account but eventually I started one that reflected me instead of us.  I was stunned one day when I went to "our" email account and discovered all of our emails were gone!  This was a piece of our history I hadn't wanted to lose but apparently the company (netzero) wiped them all out.  I lost our voice messages on our answering machine about a year after he died, I hadn't realized when the tape was full it'd record over them starting at the beginning.   I lost our cellphone messages about two weeks after he died, not realizing that would happen either.  It's frustrating when these things happen!  Times have changed since then, it's easier to keep messages now (it's been 12 years since he passed away).  It's kind of like when his smell disappeared on our sheets (about a month after).  I cried when that happened.

Each and every one of these things we feel connects us to them, but in reality, it's truly our love that connects us and that will never die or disappear.  Social Media wasn't there yet when George died, if it had been, he would have loved it and been active on it, he was very social...and I would have kept his account active.  Sigh...