Imagine that you died tonight and tomorrow morning your spouse or adult child had to figure out the mortgage, utilities, insurance, credit cards, property taxes, and funeral expenses. There might be $50,000 sitting in your checking and savings accounts, yet that doesn’t necessarily mean your family could simply log in and start spending it. Account ownership, beneficiary designations, estate procedures, insurance claims, and survivor benefits all affect how quickly money becomes available after a death. Financial planning after death isn’t only about how much you leave behind; it’s also about whether the people handling your affairs know what exists and have the legal authority to deal with it. A useful estate-planning exercise is therefore surprisingly simple: if your income stopped tonight, how would the household pay its bills next month?
