Existing Life Insurance
Was life insurance coverage in force personally or through work?
Changes at Home
Losing a Loved One
After a loss, insurance, benefits, beneficiaries, healthcare, financial accounts, and household responsibilities can all require attention. You don't have to identify everything at once.
What's changing
Here's what typically shifts.
The loss of a spouse, partner, parent, or other loved one can create financial and benefit responsibilities at a time when a family is already dealing with significant change. The goal is not to address everything immediately — it is to understand what may need attention now, next, and later.
Who does it affect?
Who else could this change affect?
A loss changes coverage and responsibilities for more than one person.
- A surviving spouse or partner.
- Children and other dependents.
- Caregivers who may take on new responsibilities.
- Beneficiaries named on policies or accounts.
- Other household members whose coverage or income is affected.
What to consider
Start with what already exists.
The first step is to identify and organize what exists, so the household can review and coordinate at a reasonable pace. Benefits Beyond Work does not administer, control, or provide investment advice on financial accounts.
- Life insurance policies — personal, employer-paid, and voluntary or supplemental workplace coverage.
- Workplace benefits, including survivor and retirement benefits where they exist.
- Beneficiary designations across policies and accounts.
- Relevant financial accounts and where they are held.
- Healthcare coverage for anyone covered through the person who died.
- Existing household insurance for the surviving household.
- Trusted professional relationships already in place.
A life change doesn’t always mean you need new insurance.
What to consider next
Questions worth asking.
Workplace Benefits
Could survivor benefits, employer-sponsored insurance, retirement benefits, or other workplace resources exist?
Beneficiary Designations
Which insurance benefits or financial accounts have beneficiary designations that may now become relevant?
Healthcare
Did anyone in the household receive healthcare coverage through the person who died?
Household Income
How does the loss affect household income and financial responsibilities?
Financial Accounts
What financial accounts may require beneficiary, ownership, contact, or other appropriate follow-up?
Existing Protection
Does the surviving household have existing insurance or protection that should be reviewed?
Relevant solutions
Given what's changing, here's where we can help.
Legacy considerations lead here. Healthcare surfaces when survivor or dependent coverage changes, and retirement considerations surface where survivor or retirement-related matters are genuinely relevant.
Protection
Life, disability, supplemental benefit, and long-term-care coverage considered around the financial consequences a household may face.
Explore ProtectionLegacy
Protection and preparedness for what you want to leave behind — including life insurance where appropriate, beneficiary preparedness, financial-account organization, and coordination with the legal and financial professionals who may be part of the larger legacy picture.
Explore Legacy
These are the areas that may deserve attention given what’s changing. You are not expected to work out which coverage applies to you from this list.
Get help from a Financial Relationship Manager
You don't have to figure out what comes next by yourself.
A Financial Relationship Manager can help you understand what benefits and coverage may exist, what needs attention now, and what can reasonably wait.
A Financial Relationship Manager helps you understand what is changing and what may need attention — so you don't have to figure that out on your own first.
Understand what's changing
Start with the actual event — a retirement date, a job change, an age-based eligibility milestone, an illness or injury — and what it affects.
Consider what you already have
Review coverage and resources already available through work, a spouse's plan, or existing policies before anything new is discussed.
Identify household needs
Look across the people who depend on those benefits, not only the person whose situation changed.
Prioritize what needs attention
Separate what has a deadline from what can wait, so the urgent decisions get made on time.
Coordinate next steps
Bring in the appropriate licensed expertise or insurance solution when one is genuinely needed.
Provide continuity
Stay the same point of contact as relevant insurance and benefit needs come up, rather than restarting the relationship with each change.
A Financial Relationship Manager is a relationship steward and coordinator. The role does not by itself make someone an investment adviser, financial planner, attorney, tax adviser, or estate-planning professional. When a need calls for one of those disciplines, the role is to help you get to the right professional — not to substitute for one.
Talk With a Financial Relationship Manager™Life Change checklist
Losing a Loved One Checklist
A practical, post-death list for finding benefits, organizing claims, and identifying appropriate support.
0 of 10 reviewed
Related life changes
Changes that often arrive together.
- Planning Your LegacyReview life insurance, beneficiary preparedness across financial accounts, household continuity, and the broader legacy plan.
- Caring for Someone You LoveConsider healthcare, protection, long-term-care, and household needs when caregiving responsibilities change.
- RetiringCoordinate the transition from workplace benefits across Medicare, healthcare, retirement, and legacy needs. For the transition happening now.
Go deeper on this
More detail, if you want it.
Additional education specific to this change, for visitors who prefer to keep reading before talking with anyone.
Now, next, and later.
Not everything needs attention at once. This ordering can help a household decide what to look at first.
Step 1
Now
Identify immediate coverage, claims, benefit, and household-continuity needs.
Step 2
Next
Review beneficiary-related items, healthcare changes, household protection, and financial-account follow-up.
Step 3
Later
Review longer-term protection, beneficiary preparedness, legacy considerations, and other household needs once immediate matters have been addressed.
A consistent point of relationship.
A Financial Relationship Manager can help provide a consistent point of relationship as the household identifies what may need attention, organizes next steps, and coordinates with appropriate professionals and resources.
You don't have to identify every next step at once.
Tell us what's changing and we'll help the household understand what may need attention now, next, and later.