Tag: widower

Untimely deaths are unfortunately common and extremely frustrating for spouses who are left to navigate a sea of unfinished financial business. From retirement plans to insurance policies, far too many widows/widowers are thrust into the unwanted position of managing assets at the worst time of their life.

In addition to grieving, the unexpected death of a spouse can cause chaos and confusion to the surviving spouse and, at the same time, not permit them to see things as clearly as they normally would. It is also far too common for couples to not have a financial or estate plan in place and this leaves the surviving spouse uncertain about what to do with finances.

I always told my friends that a widower would make the best husband. I generalized that most widowers had probably been in long-term marriages and deeply committed to their wives. If a man could love and adore his first wife, it made sense to me that he could love and adore a second wife. I never dreamed I’d actually marry one, though!

How about this idea for a new reality TV show: "Survivor: Maximize your Social Security." Rather than getting voted off the island, contestants lose when they fail to get the most out of Social Security’s survivor benefit—one of the government program’s most important features for married couples.

Here is how our reality show works. When one spouse dies, the survivor (typically, but not always the woman) has the option to take the larger of two benefits: her own or 100 percent of her late spouse’s benefit. The game sounds simple, and for many couples, it is.