The way children behave in the wake of a parent's death is perhaps the biggest wild card for a surviving spouse. "Oftentimes, they don't have the same agenda," says Ken Anderson of Kochis Fitz/Quintile, a multifamily office based in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Thomas agrees, remembering one client whose three sons immediately took control of her husband's income producing properties when he died. Soon after, one of the sons suggested that his mother move out of the family home into a condominium because the upkeep would be too difficult for her to manage alone. As it happened, the son had just proposed to his girlfriend and wanted the house for himself.
"If [a child has] got a type A personality, they will try to take the lead and that can create some interesting family dynamics," says Anderson, going on to mention a family that fell prey to the investment aspirations of its eldest son. He seized the reigns of the family finances as soon as his father was buried, fired some of his father's advisors and began investing the money himself. Rumor has it that the son's track record has fallen short of expectations.
"That's one of the reasons wealthy families have trustees, and oftentimes, that trustee is not a family member," Thomas says. "If we, as planners, can position ourselves as advisors to the trustees, we can sit on the sidelines and say when the emperor has no clothes. That's when we really bring value."
Yet another client found herself in the middle of feuding sons. Acting as the ring leader, one son took charge of his mother's accounts and made arrangements to buy her home from her at a deep discount to market value. When his brothers realized that the sale would destroy years of capital appreciation and create unanticipated tax consequences, they intervened.
But children aren't the only ones to display surprising, and often unacceptable, behavior. Sometimes business partners will put pressure on the surviving spouse to do things that didn't pass muster with the decedent when he or she was alive. One widow, Anderson recalls, was approached by her husband's former partner with a business deal and told, "It's the least you could do for me after all I did for your late husband..."
Wealthy survivors can be a great antidote for a failing deal or business venture. "I've seen business partners tell the widow of their former partner 'Your husband would have done it. And if you don't put the money in, the business will go under,'" Anderson says.
People come out of the woodwork asking for money, and it's not just relatives and close associates. Grieving widows are approached by schools, hospitals, even religious organizations. It's open season, as friends, family and fundraisers seize the opportunity to ask for money. One advisor likened them to parasites. Problems arise when you've got a surviving spouse who is not comfortable saying, 'No.' It's worse when the parent actually likes the attention. Sometimes, the children will want to protect their parent, while the parent actually enjoys being courted.
Menken says she's given money to her deceased husband's ex-wife, his daughters, and a cousin of hers who says she needed it to start a new business. Even her housekeeper hit her up for money. "It's annoying now. It's a lesson [widows] should be taught," Menken says. "I know some women who give all their money away."
Alyssa Moeder, a private wealth advisor with Merrill Lynch & Co., says she tells her clients to send those requests her way. "I tell them, 'Let me be the bad guy,'" Moeder says.
But Moeder says being a messenger is just the tip of the iceberg when dealing with widows. It goes well beyond investing, she says. Some just stop paying their bills because they don't want to open their mail. "When this all first happens, people are not themselves. Even people who are financially sophisticated find they can't focus on administrative matters," Moeder says. "They can't get their head around the little things, like should they tell the landscaper to stop coming?"