The author of ‘Checklist for My Family’ on how to organize personal, financial, and legal information for your loved ones.
Our guest on the podcast today is Sally Balch Hurme. Sally is the author of Checklist for My Family: A Guide to My History, Financial Plans and Final Wishes, as well as several other books. She worked at AARP for 23 years and has written more than 20 law review articles on topics related to elder law. She has also served on the boards of the National Guardianship Association and the Center for Guardianship Certification, where she helped develop standards for guardians and reform guardianship policies and procedures. Before moving to AARP, she was a partner in a private law firm and held several other legal roles. She also served as an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Law School, teaching elder law for eight years. She received her BA from Tulane University and her JD cum laude from the Washington College of Law at American University.
00:00:00 Working at the American Bar Association, AARP, and as a Caregiver
00:06:15 How to Get Started in Eldercare Planning
00:08:15 Final Wishes, Finding Your Roots, and Key Documents
00:26:31 Designated Beneficiaries and Medication Tracking
00:33:38 Home Deeds and The Power in Power of Attorney
00:39:48 Cleaning Up Digital Assets
Checklist for My Family: A Guide to My History, Financial Plans and Final Wishes
The ABA/AARP Checklist for Family Caregivers: A Guide to Making It Manageable
Beth Pinsker: Lessons From ‘My Mother’s Money’
Inherited IRAs: What to Know About Taxes, RMDs, and More
How to Tackle Estate-Planning Basics in 7 Steps
If you have a comment or a guest idea, please email us at TheLongView@Morningstar.com.
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(Please stay tuned for important disclosure information at the conclusion of this episode.)
Amy Arnott: Hi, and welcome to The Long View. I’m Amy Arnott, portfolio strategist for Morningstar.
Ben Johnson: And I’m Ben Johnson, head of client solutions with Morningstar.
Arnott: Our guest on the podcast today is Sally Balch Hurme. Sally is the author of Checklist for My Family: A Guide to My History, Financial Plans and Final Wishes, as well as several other books. She worked at AARP for 23 years and has written more than 20 law review articles on topics related to elder law. She has also served on the boards of the National Guardianship Association and the Center for Guardianship Certification, where she helped develop standards for guardians and reform guardianship policies and procedures. Before moving to AARP, she was a partner in a private law firm and held several other legal roles. She also served as an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Law School, teaching elder law for eight years. She received her BA from Tulane University and her JD cum laude from the Washington College of Law at American University.
Sally, welcome to The Long View.
Sally Hurme: I’m glad to be here.
Arnott: Well, thank you so much for joining us. We wanted to focus mainly on your book, Checklist for My Family: A Guide to My History, Financial Plans and Final Wishes. But before we get into that, we wanted to start out with some background on the work you’ve done and how you first started getting interested in this area.
Can you give us a quick overview of your career and how you first became interested in working on elder issues as an attorney and legal advocate? And how did that kind of transition into writing a series of these checklist books for the American Bar Association and AARP?
Hurme: Well, I’ve been practicing elder law for almost 50 years now. And you might consider me somewhat of a pioneer because there were not a lot of women lawyers back then and the practice of elder law was really in its infancy.
My advocacy really has evolved over time. It began with being a legal services attorney and then working for the American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging on guardianship policy issues. And then I spent 23 years with AARP. And while at AARP, I really had the opportunity to expand my knowledge of all of the various legal concerns that face older persons. And along the way, I’ve also done a lot of teaching as well as speaking around the country and internationally on a multitude of elder issues.
So, breaking down legal matters into understandable bits and sharing suggestions about how to address everyday legal concerns just really comes naturally to me. And so I just started writing. One successful book led to four more in the checklist series. And fortunately, I’ve sold over 100,000 copies of my checklist books.
Johnson: Sally, you’ve also had direct lived experience serving as a full-time caregiver for your husband. I’m curious how that has shaped your perspective on some of the steps that you share with your audience that people can take to plan as far ahead as they can as they and their loved ones get older.
Hurme: My husband has had a dementia diagnosis for over 10 years now. And once anyone gets such a diagnosis, planning for what lies ahead is essential, even though we really don’t know what that path is actually going to look like. And you could say that I’ve put into practice what I’ve been preaching all along, as well as learned a lot along the way. We downsized into a smaller and more accessible home. We moved closer to our family so that I would have more caregiving support. We simplified our finances down just basically into one bank account and one credit card, so it was easier to keep finances in order. We updated all of our legal documents while we still had the ability to do so. We also navigated the very rough waters of stopping driving. And then we had to put together a new team of medical professionals to coordinate his assortment of medical and mental issues. So along the way, I’ve learned to have a lot more patience, how to be more flexible in sort of setting boundaries and establishing a routine. And I guess the most important thing that I’ve learned is to repeat that mantra, that it’s the disease causing the problems, not my spouse.
So I’ve put into place many of the things that I’ve always been writing and talking about. But putting into practice some of those things can be more difficult than it might appear on paper. And I know that there’s no one solution for what those plans should look like.
Arnott: Yeah, so I wanted to talk about the process of how someone could get started. And I think a lot of people know that they need to get organized as they get older or loved ones get older, but they might feel overwhelmed or not really sure how to get started. Is part of that because people really don’t want to think about the possibility of their own lives coming to an end?
Hurme: Well, getting started to get organized is more about making your life simpler for tomorrow than just about what your perfectly organized life is going to look like at some distant time. Tracking when your passport is going to expire is something very important to know before you board that plane for your next trip abroad. And a list of your credit card accounts can be invaluable when you lose your wallet the next time. Organizing and labeling family photos or sharing a family history is really something to share with your grandkids this upcoming holiday. You’re not suddenly going to have everything in perfect order. It’s really a process and not an end result. And it may go on for a long time. But taking the small steps or working on the easy parts can be very fulfilling. And that success that you get with just getting started and thinking about what I need to get organized to help my life today really can be a big motivator to move on to something bigger or more challenging.
Johnson: Sally, I’m curious. I think for many facing these tasks, facing these lists, it can probably feel at first blush like it’s going to be tedious, time-consuming, and really kind of a chore. I think one of the points you’ve made throughout your work, I would almost frame as framing that these checklists, this work, ultimately is going to be a gift, though they might not realize it in the moment. That ultimately is in part a gift of confidence that for, any one individual, that their family is going to be ready for that moment that comes when they might be gone. I’m curious how that framing has helped, if you have also maybe any stories of family members that have relied on these processes, these lists, that you’ve created that indeed bear that out that, on an ex post, after the fact basis, it was a gift and maybe allowed them to have more time to grieve and spend less time on these tasks that would otherwise distract them from what are the more meaningful moments that they’re experiencing?
Hurme: Well, your family really can’t carry out your wishes if they don’t know what they are. They want to do the right thing. So don’t make them guess about it. I consider that this gift of knowledge could be anything from who you want to have your pearl necklace or favorite fishing rod to what hymns you want sung at your memorial service. There really are so many families who are so grateful to know just what dad wanted when they had to make decisions about medical treatments or funeral arrangements. I know from hearing from families across the country that this confidence that the family has in knowing that they’re doing the right thing really happens every day because the survivors receive that gift of known preferences.
We did the right thing because dad had the conversation, filled out the checklist, made notes, talked to us about those preferences that are so important. Obviously, we know about families that get so torn apart when the siblings can’t agree on what dad wanted, what medical treatment he wants, what funeral arrangements he wanted, where he wanted to be buried. And that just compiles upon the grief process when these decisions have to be made when a loved one does die. So you need to keep in mind that you’re not going to be around to tell your family what you want, whatever that might be for medical treatment, for the distribution of your assets, for the type of memorial service you want. Put it in writing now to ease the grief process for your family, whether your death is something that the family’s been anticipating for a while or, even more importantly, if the death becomes unexpected.
Arnott: Well, the book is very comprehensive and you discuss, I think, 10 or 11 different areas from your personal history and biography to family history, to details about insurance and investment accounts, real estate, etc. If someone is feeling kind of overwhelmed and not sure where to get started, is there kind of a good jumping-off point that you think is helpful to kind of get that process going?
Hurme: Personally, I think that a good starting point might be your own personal history. You know those details better than anyone else. Where were you born? Who were your favorite childhood playmates and the adventures you had together? Who were your favorite teachers or subjects in school? What was your first job, and how little did you get paid for that? It may be shocking to later generations. How’d you meet your spouse? What are the jobs you’ve had that you loved and those that you hated?
Your script doesn’t need to be elaborate, but consider yourself as the leading actor in a story only you can tell. And that’s a fun way to get sort of into the habit of gathering information and putting it in some sort of format that will be available for generations to come.
Johnson: Sally, I’m curious on those formats, and I think especially in this day and age when we’ve got so much like different forms of media and means of recording these stories from our loved ones. If there’s anything in particular that you’ve seen or even just sort of seen change over time with respect to how families go about trying to capture these stories for the sake of posterity, for the sake of, I think of, my own grandpa, Grandpa Bob, and a lot of it is word-of-mouth that I tell to my own daughters. But certainly, would have loved to at one point in time, had technology allowed, like interviewed him in video format so they could have heard from him directly. What do you see families doing with respect to preserving their family members’ legacy in that regard?
Hurme: It can be everything from scrapbooks to three-ring binders to photo albums. The opportunities now to gather memories and to save them in one format or another for posterity has certainly multiplied. Used to be, it was just trying to decipher handwriting in old letters or somebody’s diary that they maintained either as a teenager or on through life. Those are now in archives and are valuable. But for your own personal family history keeping, the format that you choose is probably going to be the format that you’re most familiar with. I have many three-ring binders with acid-proof paper that I have placed very special photos. One thing with photos, at least if they’re print, is to be sure that you identify who is in the photo.
One process that I’m doing right now that’s a long-term process is my father had 35-millimeter slides in these rings that you showed, in a special projector. I’m going through those old photo rings and digitizing the most important photos, putting them into folders as to like it was the trip to South Dakota or the one kid’s 13th birthday party, labeling what it is. And I have now on my computer a big folder of family photos that are all indexed as to what’s within that photo. I also, I do have shelves in my basement with scrapbooks and binders collecting these things as well as creating digital folders.
Whatever medium you want to use, just make sure somebody knows what the folder name is or where the notebooks are created or where anything digitally could be found. It’s going to be up to you. There’s so many choices now.
Johnson: I do like, and I don’t know why, but for some reason, one of my most visceral memories is the smell of the exhaust fan of our family’s slide projector when we would have family slide shows growing up, so that resonates with me deeply, Sally.
Hurme: Yes.
Arnott: In addition to having physical records, whether it’s photos or slides that are labeled and organized in some way, one of the suggestions I really liked is to talk to your relatives at family gatherings to kind of get their, not just names and dates of relatives, but favorite memories of their parents and grandparents or other relatives. And I’m wondering is that something you were able to do with your parents before they passed away?
Hurme: Yes, indeed. One thing that I did was to create a special family gathering. And what we did is that I took my widowed mother and my school-age children on what I called a “roots trip.” And we spent a couple of weeks driving to each of the cities and farms where my mother and her parents and grandparents and the great-grands had lived. We explored their hometowns, tried to see if we could find the actual address if the house was still there or not been torn down. We explained to my kids their ancestors’ immigration or migration journeys across the United States into the Midwest. We visited many cemeteries, maybe too many cemeteries for my little kids, and took lots and lots of pictures. And then those photos along with explanations of what we saw and what the photo was depicting are now in one of my ubiquitous scrapbooks. And now they’re available for my then school-age children, who are now grown-up children with children of their own, to get some sense of the history and interesting stories about their ancestors that they’re never going to know in person.
Johnson: Sally, when you think about, sort of more pragmatically, like go back and sort of revisit your family’s origin story, your roots, but every bit is important, if in some contexts, maybe more important, are just fundamental documents, things like birth certificates, marriage licenses, citizenship papers, you name it. Why is it important to be across these key documents, and what are some of the best practices for collecting and storing and ultimately sharing with others the whereabouts of these key pieces of paper?
Hurme: That’s the boring stuff, but it’s really important stuff. You need to have copies of these various documents that you mentioned. Basically, anytime you need to prove that you were born, when, and where, and who your parents were, you need to be able to prove that you were married and for how long, and to whom, and basically ditto that you were divorced. These are really important documents that you must have available to show that you are eligible for all those various public benefits that are age-based or based on your marital status or your citizenship status. For example, if you want Social Security spousal benefits or survivor benefits, you need to be able to prove who you were married to, how long you’ve been married, and those are the documents that the government is going to require you to be able to produce. If you don’t have copies of these documents now, it’s really easy to get copies from the state where this event happened, whether it was a birth or marriage, from what’s typically called a Department or Bureau of Vital Statistics.
Every state has a system. It used to be you had to go to a location to get those copies of those documents, but now you can just do it online, write to the state Department of Vital Statistics for birth or death certificates, write to the Clerk of Court of the county and state where you got your marriage license or your divorce decree. Typically, they’re going to want identifying information as to what you are looking for, and the more information and details you have, the quicker the request can be processed. Frequently, you can get these documents just online. It depends on the state and what you’re looking for.
Once you have them, put all of these documents in a key location. I have both paper copies as well as digital copies on my computer, but the paper copies, birth certificates, along with passports, and all of these other identifying information documents, are in a folder. I have them in a file drawer with other important papers, but you might want to put them into some sort of box, a fireproof box. And, thinking of natural disasters that are happening across the country with too much regularity now, you might want to have at least copies, if not the originals, with you in a box near your door so that you can grab these important documents if there’s a fire or a flood or a hurricane or other natural disaster because you need these documents to establish who you are to get the benefits. So keep them together in a safe place, readily accessible, and tell somebody else where you keep your important documents.
Arnott: And I’m imagining that would also apply to other information like information about life insurance policies or investment accounts.
Hurme: Yes, I would recommend that you have an emergency box with copies of your credit card, with a list of your bank accounts, with copies of life insurance, homeowners insurance, car insurance policies. It doesn’t have to be the originals but should be a portable copy that you can get to quickly in the event of any emergency. And I would also put in that box your healthcare power of attorney, your financial power of attorney, and even a copy of your will.
Johnson: One of, I think, the all-important steps that many seem to miss is one that is somewhat more proactive, which is selecting, in particular, in the context of various forms of retirement savings plans, designated beneficiaries. So in the first instance, selecting those folks and then, by extension, I would imagine you’d suggest you let those folks know who they are. Why is this such an important step, and why do so many people seem to skip this all-important step?
Hurme: It is so extremely important to have designated beneficiaries on all your retirement accounts as well as life insurance policies or annuities. It’s beyond me why someone wouldn’t designate a beneficiary. And I know that the investment advisors and the plan managers and the insurance agents all alert people not to ignore the importance of designating beneficiaries. I don’t know why you would neglect to do so. That’s beyond my psychological information. But why is it important? Well, you have saved to build up your estate, whatever format that might be in, and you want somebody to receive whatever is left, if you haven’t spent it all along the way. But this is your nest egg for your use and then to pass on to those you choose. So you need to choose who it is that is going to receive whatever is in these various nest egg accounts.
The reason why you want to do this is because whomever you designate as the beneficiary will automatically get whatever is in the account when you die. It will be relatively quick and simple for them to access what is due to them. If you don’t name a beneficiary, the money in the account will just go into your regular probate estate and that is held by your executor and then distributed according to whomever you have chosen in your will to receive the assets. And if you don’t have a will, the money is going to be distributed by your administrator to whomever the closest kin are that you have according to state law. And that is a process that you have no choice over and can take many years and you want to stay in control. You want to designate who it is that you want the money in this account and it can be very different than the beneficiaries in your will. But you have options, you have choices, make that beneficiary designation, and if you have made that beneficiary designation, be sure to review it from time to time. Has there been new family coming into your life? Has there been a death in your family that maybe has been a named beneficiary? Maybe you’ve fallen out with whomever you named as your beneficiary. So, periodically review your named beneficiaries because it’s a very simple way for the people you want to get the money that you have saved over a lifetime.
Arnott: And I’ve heard stories where, sometimes, if there’s a divorce and one of the spouses forgets to update the beneficiary, that can cause a lot of conflict within a family.
Hurme: It certainly can. But the beneficiary, that’s why you need to review your beneficiary designation from time to time. Even if there hasn’t been a significant life event like a death or a divorce in the family. But keep it current, name them, and update them.
Arnott: Another practical recommendation you make is to make a list of all of your prescriptions, as well as over-the-counter medications and supplements, and keep a copy with you, either in your wallet or on your phone. Why is having that information close at hand so important?
Hurme: Well, there are two reasons. One is really for your convenience the next time you go to the doctor’s office because every time you go to the doctor they will and they should go over all of your current medications. And my husband’s medication list is pretty long and changes relatively frequently, doses get changed, and so forth. So all I have to do when we next go to the doctor’s office is to pull out the slip in my wallet to verify what he is currently taking. So it makes life easier, particularly for a caregiver who has accompanied somebody to a medical appointment, to have that list so you don’t have to struggle with, Well, is he taking it twice a day, or is it 50 milligrams or 75 milligrams?
Also it’s for your own protection if you should be in an automobile accident. The paramedics or emergency room personnel will find the list in your wallet, and they know to look, and then they will quickly know what meds you are taking and what special health conditions you might have that are related to the medications that you’re taking. So this can make sure that there are no adverse drug reactions, or the emergency room personnel know what your current health environment looks like. So, two reasons: your convenience and your protection.
Johnson: Sally, one of the other practical tips you share has to do with a measure that many undertake that they think, at least at face value, is well-intentioned, whereby they may add a child or someone else to a real estate deed as a joint owner. But you point out that there’s a lot of potential negative consequences here for all parties involved, and then think, especially in an environment where we’re floating the idea of 50-year mortgages, maybe this becomes even more widely considered. What can go wrong in this scenario?
Hurme: Well, adding a child to your home deed may sound like a good idea, but it really can create big consequences both for you and for your child. For you, once the child is on the deed, they own it just as much as you do. And if they get a divorce, your home is part of the divorce settlement. If they need to file for bankruptcy, your home is part of the bankruptcy proceedings. If you want to sell the house or take out a mortgage, they must agree and sign. You may not be able to get a reverse mortgage or be eligible for Medicaid or get a homestead property tax break or some VA benefits. And that’s just for you.
For your child, they really need to talk to a tax advisor about the different consequences between receiving the home now as a gift rather than waiting for stepped up gains if they inherit the home later. They will have much higher capital gains taxes if they receive the house as a gift rather than as an inheritance.
Arnott: I think another thing people may not realize is that even if a family member has power of attorney and you’ve set up those documents, your agent might not have access to your bank account unless both you and the person who has power of attorney contact the bank and sign that bank’s specific forms. And this is something—we talked to Beth Pinsker recently. She also mentioned this can be a real problem if people aren’t able to get that bank-specific paperwork done before someone becomes incapacitated. Are there any other important steps people should take when they’re setting up financial power of attorney or healthcare power of attorney?
Hurme: Absolutely. This issue about banks accepting a perfectly legal power of attorney is one of those issues that we, elder law attorneys, have been fighting and trying to address for seems like decades now. But my favorite word of caution about signing a financial power of attorney is the care that you must use in selecting the person that you want to be your agent. Do they understand the limitations of their authority? Do they understand that, as long as you want to, you are making the decisions? They need to understand that it’s your money and not their money. Can they keep their hands out of your financial affairs for as long as you are able to make your own financial decisions?
I try to preach that it is important for whomever you select as your financial agent to understand that they are waiting in the wings to step in and take care of your financial affairs when you cannot do so. One analogy would be to think of an extra set of keys to your car. You have a car, you have the keys, you drive it around and go wherever you want to as long as you are able. It’s still your car, but you may give someone else an extra set of keys so that they can drive you where you want to go. And it’s sort of the same idea for an agent. They will drive your financial affairs where you want to go just because you are no longer able to do that driving yourself. Selecting the person that you want to be the agent is probably the most important step for your financial security that you can take.
Johnson: Sally, I’m curious if you have any recommendations for folks that are considering how best to make sure that, call it, their digital affairs are in order. That could span everything from digital assets, things like cryptocurrencies, to, I’ve got a number of family members myself that have Facebook pages that are effectively now a form of digital tombstone for them. How do we make sure that we’ve got everything covered with respect to all our various digital affairs these days?
Hurme: This is a big mess, and there really is no easy solution. And you probably could have a whole hour just on all of the issues surrounding digital assets and the various ways you can protect them and then make them accessible. Almost every online account may have different protections or protocols. There are good reasons why this is such a mess, I guess, because there are federal and state privacy laws and computer fraud laws that do make it very difficult, for your own safety and security and privacy, for anyone else to get access to what now are myriads of different kinds of things online that are protected in one way or another. Most digital providers are prohibited from disclosing most account information, including passwords, to anyone without the holder’s consent, and if the holder no longer has capacity or is deceased, what do you do?
So I have three simple steps that have very lengthy explanations, but let me just do a top line. First of all, have a secure list of all of your online accounts—whether it’s Twitter or Facebook or Google or your bank accounts or your Google Drive or even your bitcoin or your Netflix. Make a list of all of those things that are online that are password-protected. List each account and those passwords and any login instructions so that your family at least know where to start and how possibly to get access to that information, whether it’s a renewal or billing or bank account statements or your retirement account statements, whatever. It’s a maze out there.
And then, the next important thing to do is to designate someone, through a specific power of attorney, that specifically says that this person you have selected can access your accounts. Should you die, your agent then will use that document to show to all of the various online account providers and platforms that you have given consent to them to access your accounts. A regular power of attorney probably will not be sufficient. Your power of attorney needs to specifically say you have access to my online accounts. And this could be someone different than the person that you have as your financial power of attorney. In my case, I probably would make it my grandson who would know how better to get along on the internet than I do.
And then be proactive and check with each of those accounts about what their protocols might be for gaining access. For example, I know that Facebook, Google, and Apple currently allow you to designate what they call a “legacy contact” who can manage your account after you die. You’ll need to dig into the interstices of those accounts to find out how to designate a legacy contact but be proactive, particularly with the accounts that you most frequently use, where you have the most significant financial and personal information stored, and see what you can do to make sure that you are leaving access to your executor or your financial power of attorney to be able to access these accounts after your death.
Arnott: Well, as I mentioned earlier, the book Checklist for My Family covers a lot of ground. You also have a lot of the checklists available online, but I’m curious: Are there any other books or resources, either related to helping aging people get organized or resources for family caregivers, that you think are especially helpful?
Hurme: You mentioned that one of your recent podcast guests was Beth Pinsker. My Mother’s Money, that’s just newly out, and I consulted with Beth as she was developing her text, and that certainly is an excellent resource. I will have to plug one of my other books, which is Checklist for Family Caregivers, which is in the same checklist format but goes into greater detail about how to be a caregiver and the information you need to gather while you are making either financial or healthcare decisions for your loved one as a caregiver.
Arnott: Yeah, so this has all been really helpful. We’ve only scratched the surface of everything that you cover in the book, but thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today.
Hurme: It’s been my pleasure.
Johnson: Really appreciate you sharing your time and your insights with us, Sally. This was a great conversation.
Hurme: Lots of fun. Any day I can talk about these topics is a good day.
Arnott: Thank you for joining us on The Long View. If you could please take a moment to subscribe to and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You could follow me on social media @Amy Arnott on LinkedIn.
Johnson: And @Ben Johnson, CFA, on LinkedIn or @MstarBenJohnson on X.
Arnott: George Castady is our engineer for the podcast, and Kari Greczek produces the show notes each week.
Finally, we’d love to get your feedback. If you have a comment or a guest idea, please email us at TheLongView@Morningstar.com. Until next time, thanks for joining us.
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