That was only the beginning. John's former partner contacted me before the funeral to explain why she had never responded to any of my e-mails depicting John's declining health. Turns out, she and John were locked in a dispute over some money she felt he owed her, and they hadn't spoken to one another in six months. I had been thinking of Robin as someone who might give one of the eulogies at the funeral. Now I feared she would press her claim against his estate, which appeared to be shrinking fast. (Thankfully, she never did.)
A few weeks after the funeral, a manila envelope about a half-an-inch thick arrived in the mail. Inside were copies of time sheets from a heating and air conditioning contractor who had done work on our house, accompanied by a bill for $50,011. John had never mentioned that the work he had commissioned would come to anywhere near that gargantuan amount. All I could think of was, there goes a quarter of his life insurance.
The surprises kept coming: Because John had refused to pay a water bill he was disputing, I received a letter indicating we were in technical default on our mortgage. At one point, Columbia-Presbyterian's accounting system went into overdrive and sent me 17 different bills on the same day claiming we owed them $24,907 for chemo and blood tests that the insurance company hadn't reimbursed them for. John's ex-partner's ex-landlord even tried to press a claim against his estate. It got to the point where I was afraid to look at the mail.
On the plus side of the ledger, Jae called one day to tell me that a lawyer my husband had retained was trying to reach me. It seems John had placed a $150,000 lien on a building for architectural fees he was never paid and it needed to be renewed to remain valid. Without that call I would have been totally unaware of the lien as a potential asset.
I know what you're thinking -- this could never happen to you. It sounds like such an extreme situation. Certainly, John's role as an architect, developing houses for clients as well as for us, meant that the lines between his business and his personal life were blurred. But blurring is common with small businesses. Many spouses of small-business owners will face the same issues I did because, unfortunately, the remains of the business are often all that masquerades as insurance and a pool of retirement money. Even if they rely on an estate attorney, they're going to want to know: What and where are the assets, and what should be done about the liabilities? Which bills deserve to be paid, and which ones are exaggerated or even bogus? Many small businesses lack accounting departments or full-time bookkeepers; many entrepreneurs keep the most important financial and legal details in their heads. In these ways, I do not believe my situation is unique at all.
Moreover, I don't believe that my husband was particularly irresponsible when it came to estate planning. He had insurance and an IRA, and he spent the last months of his life fighting with contractors to shore up the value of our new home. Although frustratingly illiquid, it is worth far more than any life insurance or retirement plan he would have signed up for. So I consider myself one of the luckier ones. Only 29% of employees in small businesses participate in retirement plans, for instance, compared with 58% for midsize and large companies, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. "Most [entrepreneurs] are bootstrapping everything. They're so busy pouring cash back into the company it's one of those things they never get to," says Chris Hennessey, faculty director of the executive education program at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. "They're so busy keeping customers happy they don't sit back and do a planning day."
As for those nasty surprises, I firmly believe that no matter how close you are to your spouse -- in our case, we were happily devoted to each other for 24 years -- there are probably things he or she won't speak about as the end comes near, assuming you have the luxury of time. I've spent many a sleepless night trying to figure out why my husband never discussed what, in hindsight, seem like crucial issues to me. He may have thought he would have time to resolve them; he may not have wanted to upset me any more than I was already; he may simply have become overwhelmed by his health problems. I'm often asked if I'm angry with him for these omissions, but how could I be? My husband suffered from a horrible disease, his professional dreams were extinguished at the most promising moment of his career, and he lost the chance to watch his incredible children grow up. Compared with those losses, an undisclosed lien, no matter how large, means nothing.
Moreover, whatever mistakes we made, we made them together. I didn't want to go near the dreaded subject of what happens afterward. It terrified me. I refused to discuss it, believing that to do so betrayed a hopelessness I was not ready to acknowledge. It would have been disloyal to his fight.
Discussing this with his attorney now, I know my ignorance about his business is not uncommon. "That's normal," says Alfred Goldfield, a senior partner at Balsam Felber & Goldfield in New York City. "Many wives don't want to know everything about the business." And of course, the secrets can extend far beyond one's business life. A friend of mine who is also a widow told me she found out at her husband's wake that he had been married not just once but twice before! No matter how successful your marriage is, don't assume you know everything.
In my case, at least, a small amount of forward planning could have saved me great anguish and might have minimized some financial blows. One tiny illustration: All of my husband's most important correspondence was on his laptop. But after he died I realized I didn't know his password. Through trial and error, I was eventually able to figure it out, but how simple it would have been for us to think of that beforehand.
