Inheritance Diary No. 2: The struggle of piecing together a parent’s financial life after death

Eventually, the vast majority of us will encounter the many challenges that come with settling a loved one’s estate, and yet it is one of the hardest facets of finances to talk about. No one particularly wants to think about a parent’s death—or their own mortality for that matter. And when you have more pressing to-dos, it’s easy to put end-of-life planning on hold.

But today’s entry gets into some of the complications that can pop up after a parent’s death, particularly if it is unexpected. It’s not uncommon for surviving spouses or children to have to piece together their loved one’s financial life, tracking down accounts and spending more time than they want to on hold with various banks and other financial institutions.

In an ideal world, our loved ones would organize their estates and have a will, trust, or other list of accounts and documents to make settling their estate easier. But life rarely goes according to plan. It often takes months—and sometimes well over a year—to settle an estate while juggling work, family, and other commitments.

For more tactical advice, see my recent article on what you need to know about being an estate executor. And if you’d like to submit your own tips or inheritance diary, reply to this email.

Our first inheritance diary might have gone to your spam folder last week. Here’s the link in case you missed it!

- Alicia

Age: 41
Location: Arizona
Relationship status: Married
Children: Two young children
Household income: $200,000
How much you inherited: I inherited $350,000 from my father. He died in 2025 and the process took until this year to settle.

The following is edited for clarity.

Can you tell us about your finances before you received an inheritance? I live with my husband and two kids in a medium-cost-of-living city, and we make about $200,000 a year—it varies a decent amount, as my husband is a freelance musician, adjunct professor, and music teacher, so you never know what the month will bring.

I have tried to max out pre-tax and Roth accounts and have a brokerage for any extra money, though the extra money went down substantially once we had our kids. I would say I wasn’t particularly stressed about money, except to the extent that preschool for two is insane, and my job is ruining my mental health, so I would like to quit or retire when possible, but it’s not really feasible as the breadwinner and insurance provider for our family.

Did you know you would receive an inheritance, or was it a surprise? It was definitely a surprise. My dad used to joke when he would bet on sports (the old school way with a bookie, none of this newfangled online gambling nonsense with ads that I cannot escape) that I should hope it went well as it was my inheritance, ha.

He was unconventional in many ways, so I didn’t think his scattered and eclectic work history would result in much of anything. But ultimately, in the end, he spent a good number of years teaching in California public schools, and the pension was actually meaningful, so it ended up being a decent chunk of cash. All the more reason for states to have comprehensive benefits for their employees!

It was also surprising in the sense that I assumed he would live for much longer and draw down more of his contributions and retirement money. He only retired in 2023 and then passed away two years later, so he hadn’t used that much of his retirement savings, and he had planned for a much longer lifespan. He was a big life extension devotee and took a whole slew of supplements to try to live longer—and he was always sending me research on this or that about how it would affect lifespan. He seemed in perfect health when we saw him two months before his death, so we all assumed he would be living for much longer and drawing down on his teacher pension.

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What was the process like receiving the inheritance? How long did it take from start to finish? My father died in California without a will, so after his death, I had to jump through a bunch of hoops to get access to his apartment, where I searched through whatever documents I could find to try to figure out what accounts he had, if there was a beneficiary designation, and whether there were any documents that could “prove up” our relationship.

I was granted some good luck in that he had message previews on his phone, so even though I couldn’t unlock it, I could see the two-factor identification codes most of the time. From that, I was able to get into his computer, and that helped considerably. Still, because there was no will, I had to send so many forms back and forth with the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, or CalSTRS; three different banks where he had accounts or CDs (each had an entirely different process); and his apartment management company. I developed a close and personal relationship with the Chase banker at my local branch, as I would make appointments to get things notarized, and it seemed like I was there weekly for a while.

A number of places also needed the paperwork to be faxed, which seems slightly insane in this day and age. I was able to get access to his checking about a month after his death, the CDs three months and six months later, his retirement account about three months later, and the pension contributions seven months later.

What emotions came up throughout the estate settlement process? Frustration, sadness, annoyance, impatience, overwhelm, and gratitude.

What form did your inheritance come in? IRAs (traditional and a small Roth), CDs, pension contributions, and a few personal belongings. I had only one weekend to clear out his apartment so as to avoid paying another month of rent, and because we lived out of state. I listed all his furniture at extremely low prices on Craigslist and Marketplace, and it all went like hotcakes. Turns out there are a lot of people in the Bay Area who need cheap furniture!

With no will, how did you navigate the intestate process? California has a fairly generous upper limit for its small estate affidavit process, which allows you to avoid probate if the assets are under $208,850 for deaths after March 31, 2025. Any accounts with a beneficiary designation or pay-on-death accounts aren’t counted in that total.

As a result, I completed a notarized affidavit to give to the various bank custodians along with whatever documents they required, and as mentioned earlier, they each had their own special set of hoops to jump through.

For the retirement accounts, the beneficiary was designated as per stirpes, which is a legal term that means it goes to your descendants, and if one of your descendants has passed away, their share gets split between however many of their descendants are living, and so on. I am his only child, but it was surprisingly difficult to prove that, so I had to order my birth certificate and get disclaimers from my half-sister that she was not his child, and it was a whole production.

Finally, I found a living will (ironic that he had this but not any other kind of estate document) that named me as his daughter, and they decided that was good enough for their proof. For CalSTRS, thankfully, he identified me as his beneficiary by name, and it was only due to their own processes and backlog that it took seven months.

How have you spent it? It was invaluable to help me survive the government shutdown and have some additional cash flow until I could be paid again, but other than that, I rolled everything over into an inherited IRA, meaning that I have to do withdrawals over 10 years following the date of his death, and it’s taxed at ordinary income rates.

I also put some of the cash into my kids’ 529 accounts, which made me feel good, as my dad really valued education. We also started leasing an EV, which he would have liked, and which has been AWESOME. (As an aside, I wouldn’t normally lease anything, but the lease incentives were insane right before the tax credit ended, so it actually ended up being cheaper even if we pay the residual to buy it at the end of the lease.)

Are you managing the money yourself, or do you have someone helping you? I am managing it myself, but personal finance is kind of my jam, so I don’t mind. All the logistics were also somewhat helpful to give my brain something to do instead of dwelling on grief.

Has it changed your relationship with money or impacted your financial goals? For the most part, it hasn’t changed my relationship with money, but it definitely accelerated my FIRE goals and was a stark reminder that you never know what is going to happen in your life. It also helped with college saving for the kids.

Has it changed any personal relationships? No—though that’s largely because I have not told anyone other than my husband about the extent of it.

Has it changed how you think about your own estate planning? It definitely made me want to get my ducks in a row, though my ADHD mind continues to struggle with task completion. Nonetheless, I made triple sure that all of my accounts have named beneficiary designations, and I checked my husband’s, too, as that process is a million times easier than probate or even a trust.

Biggest surprises throughout the process? How it is truly impossible to break into an iPhone, Social Security numbers are strangely hard to find, faxes are still a thing, every financial organization has their own unique process, the number of phone calls I had to make (and I’m a millennial who hates the phone, so it was a challenge), and how challenging this must be to those without the same knowledge of law and personal finance, as it was hard enough for me.

I was also very grateful that my dad lived in a one-bedroom apartment and was a minimalist, as it made cleaning out his life’s belongings considerably easier than I expected, or will be for my mom, or us, or most others.

Biggest lessons throughout the process? Make sure your loved ones know what accounts you have, what your Social Security number is, and your phone password. Put beneficiary designations on every account—retirement, pension, other financial instruments, real property, you name it. Write a will!

And live for today, as there may be no tomorrow.

Thank you so much! Please comment with kindness!