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Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

When something as devastating as the Clancy children case dominates every news feed and conversation, most people do what I used to do — scroll, feel awful, and move on. But there's this thing that happens in my brain now, probably because I spent years being financially unprepared for literally everything, where tragedy makes me think about the financial side of grief that nobody wants to talk about. The legal proceedings, the family members left behind, the cost of funerals, of lawyers, of therapy, of just surviving when everything falls apart. People don't talk about this stuff. And then they're blindsided by it.

I'm not going to pretend this is a feel-good post. It's not. But here's the thing — some of the worst financial decisions I've ever seen people make happened in the aftermath of loss or crisis. When you're grieving or scared or just completely overwhelmed, you sign things you shouldn't sign, you spend money you don't have, and you put off decisions that genuinely cannot wait. I watched my aunt go through this after my uncle died. She had no idea what accounts existed, what insurance he had, nothing. Took her almost two years to untangle it. Two years of financial chaos on top of everything else she was dealing with.

So today I want to talk about the money stuff around death, grief, and family financial planning — specifically the things most families completely skip over until it's too late. Not fun. Necessary.

Life Insurance — What It Actually Covers and What It Doesn't

Most people I know have one of two problems with life insurance. Either they have none at all, or they have some random policy their employer gave them that they've never actually looked at. I was in the second camp for way too long. Just assumed it was fine. It was not fine.

Here's what people don't realize — a basic employer life insurance policy is usually one or two times your annual salary. If you make $60,000 a year, that's $60,000 to $120,000 for your family. Sounds like a lot until you think about what it actually needs to cover. Funeral costs alone can run $10,000 to $15,000 easily. Add in mortgage payments for the next several months while your spouse figures things out, lost income, possibly childcare costs, and that money disappears faster than you'd think.

Term life insurance for a healthy 30-something is genuinely not that expensive. I pay around $30 a month for a $500,000 20-year term policy. I kept putting it off for years because I thought it would be complicated or expensive or both. It was neither. What's actually expensive is leaving your family without coverage when something happens.

And look, if you have children, this is not optional. That's just my opinion and you can disagree but you'd be wrong. The idea that your kids might have to go live with relatives and those relatives would be covering costs out of pocket because you never got around to buying a policy — that should keep you up at night.

Estate Planning Is Not Just For Rich People

Every single time I bring up wills and estate planning, someone says some version of "I don't have enough to worry about that." I said the same thing. For years. Then my cousin died at 34 with no will and a four-year-old daughter and the entire family spent six months in absolute chaos over who was responsible for what.

A basic will costs somewhere between $150 and $500 if you use an online service or a straightforward attorney. That's it. You can also set up beneficiary designations on your bank accounts, retirement accounts, and life insurance, and those designations actually override whatever your will says — which is something a lot of people don't know and it causes massive problems.

If you have kids, you also need to designate a guardian. This is the conversation nobody wants to have because it involves thinking about your own death and also potentially having awkward conversations with family members. But have you ever thought about what actually happens if you don't? The courts decide. Strangers in a courtroom decide who raises your children. That's the alternative to filling out some paperwork.

Healthcare proxies and power of attorney documents matter too. If something happens and you're incapacitated, who makes medical decisions for you? Who can access your accounts to pay your bills? Without these documents, even your spouse may have trouble doing basic things. The paperwork is annoying. The consequences of skipping it are worse.

Emergency Funds When the Emergency Is a Family Crisis

The standard advice is three to six months of expenses. You've heard it. Most people nod and then don't do it. But when I talk about emergency funds in the context of actual family crises, I mean something slightly different than the usual job-loss scenario.

When a family tragedy occurs — and I mean something serious, death, serious illness, legal trouble — the costs are unpredictable and they come fast. Travel costs to be with family. Time off work that may not be covered. Helping with funeral costs if your family doesn't have the money. Therapy, because pretending you don't need it after something traumatic doesn't actually work. These things cost money and they don't wait for you to be financially ready.

What I found was that having a separate account I think of as a "family crisis fund" separate from my regular emergency fund actually helped. It's a smaller amount — I keep about $3,000 in there — specifically for the unpredictable costs that come with family emergencies. Flights home. A few weeks of hotel costs. Helping cover something unexpected. Having it already there means I'm not putting it on a credit card and paying 24% interest while also being emotionally destroyed.

This one is something most middle-class families are completely unprepared for. Legal proceedings of any kind — whether you're a victim's family seeking answers, someone navigating a wrongful death suit, or dealing with the estate of someone who died — cost money. A lot of it.

Attorney fees vary wildly but even basic consultation fees can be $200 to $500 an hour. If a case drags on, and many do, families can spend tens of thousands of dollars. Some attorneys work on contingency for certain types of cases, meaning they take a percentage of any settlement rather than charging upfront. But that's not universal, and even understanding your options requires doing research while you're already in a state of grief or shock.

Legal insurance is something I never thought about until a friend mentioned it. Some employers offer it as a benefit and most people opt out because they don't think they'll need it. It costs maybe $10 to $25 a month and gives you access to attorneys for various legal matters. Not a solution for every situation but worth looking at if it's available to you.

And honestly, just knowing what a basic will and proper beneficiary designations can prevent in terms of legal headaches is reason enough to get that stuff done. The families that have it figured out ahead of time spend less time and money in legal limbo.

How Grief Wrecks Your Financial Decision-Making

This is something I've lived and also watched happen to people I love. Grief does something to your brain. Decision-making becomes really hard. Impulse control is lower. The ability to think long-term basically disappears for a while, and that is completely normal and completely dangerous when it comes to money.

People make huge financial decisions in the weeks after a death. They sell houses. They lend money to relatives. They liquidate retirement accounts — which come with taxes and penalties — because it feels like there's an immediate cash need. They sign documents they don't fully read. They agree to things they'd never agree to under normal circumstances.

The rule that most financial advisors will tell you is to make no major financial decisions for at least six months after a significant loss. Sound familiar? It should, because you've probably heard it before. And yet. The pressure to do something, to fix things, to handle it, is intense. Grief makes people want to take action even when inaction is smarter.

If you are in a position to plan ahead, the best thing you can do is tell someone you trust — a friend, a sibling, a financial advisor — that if something happens, they are your designated voice of reason. Someone whose job it is to say "wait, let's think about this" when you want to make a big move too fast.

Common Mistakes Families Make

Look, I've made most of these myself or watched people I care about make them. No judgment. Just honesty.

The first one is assuming the other person knows where everything is. Couples do this constantly. One person handles the finances and the other just trusts that everything is fine. And then something happens to the person who knows, and the other one is completely lost. I have a document — just a Google Doc — that tells my wife where every account is, what every login is, what insurance we have and where the policies are, and who our attorney is. Takes twenty minutes to make. Saves enormous headaches.

The second mistake is not updating beneficiary designations. People list their mom as a beneficiary when they're 25 and single. Then they get married, have kids, get divorced maybe, and never update it. Your beneficiary designation overrides your will. I cannot stress this enough. Your ex-spouse could legally receive your life insurance payout if you never updated it after your divorce.

Third — and this is a big one — is mixing financial help with grief. When families are dealing with tragedy, there's often a lot of money moving around. Helping relatives, covering costs, lending things that turn into gifts. This gets messy fast and can create financial and relationship problems that last for years. Decide in advance what you're willing to give and treat it as giving, not lending, to protect both your money and your relationships.

Fourth is ignoring your own financial stability while trying to help everyone else. This happens especially to people who are seen as the "responsible one" in their family. You exhaust your savings helping others through a crisis and then have nothing left for your own emergencies. You can't pour from an empty cup and all that. It's true even when it's hard.

What I Would Actually Do

Okay, here's my honest personal take. If you haven't done these things yet, this week is the week. Not because I'm trying to scare you but because this stuff takes like a few hours total and the cost of not doing it is potentially catastrophic.

First, get term life insurance if you have dependents. Go to a comparison site, get a few quotes, pick one. Done.

Second, make a simple document listing every account, every policy, every login, and who your emergency contacts are financially speaking. Give it to someone you trust or put it somewhere your partner or family could find it.

Third, update your beneficiary designations on every account. Log into your 401k, your IRA, your life insurance, your bank accounts if they have payable-on-death options. Check who's listed. Update as needed.

Fourth, at minimum, write a basic will. Use LegalZoom or a similar service if you can't afford an attorney right now. A basic will is infinitely better than no will.

And fifth — talk to the people you love about this stuff. I know it's uncomfortable. But the conversation is so much easier to have now than it is in the middle of a crisis.

That's it. Not complicated. Just stuff that takes a little time and a willingness to think about things most people prefer not to think about.

Cases like the Clancy tragedy remind me that life is unpredictable in the worst possible ways. The best thing I can do, the only thing really, is make sure the people I love are protected as much as I can manage. The paperwork is the love language nobody talks about.

If you've been putting any of this off, consider this your nudge. A pretty heavy-handed one, I know. But you needed it and so did I once.

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