The letter I ask every couple to write
If something happened to you tomorrow, would your spouse know where everything is, who to call, what to claim and what not to touch? One page answers all of it.
In most households one person runs the money. It isn't a character flaw, it's division of labor, and it works right up until the day it doesn't. I've sat with too many people in the weeks after a loss who were grieving and, at the same time, trying to work out which bills were on autopay, where the life insurance policy was, and whether the account they'd just found was the one they thought it was.
So I ask every couple I work with to write a letter. Not a legal document. The will and the beneficiary forms do the legal work. This is a plain-language note from the person who knows how everything fits together to the person who will have to pick it up.
What goes in it
It's one or two pages, and it answers a handful of questions in order. Where is everything. Who to call first, with their phone numbers. What to claim, and when. What not to touch, and why. What arrives automatically each month and what has to be requested. Where the passwords live. And a few sentences about what you'd want, which turns out to be the part people are most grateful for later.
How we keep it current
We write it together the first time, usually within a few months of starting work. Then it gets a date at the top and comes out once a year at our review, where both of you read it and we fix whatever changed. Accounts move, a policy lapses, a phone number changes, a grandchild gets named as a beneficiary. Ten minutes a year keeps it true.
I keep a copy too, so that when the call comes, the person on the other end of the line already knows where to start.
The letter is the difference between a spouse who has to reconstruct a financial life and one who gets to simply continue it.
If you've never written one, the outline on the right is where to begin. Bring it to our first conversation and we'll finish it together.