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 I was in "death time"When Kay M. met her husband Bill back in 1979, it was love at first sight. "He walked into the office where I was working, and that's how it all started," she recalls. The two eventually married in 1980. A second marriage for each, Kay had two young children and Bill had one child. Both in their early 30s, together they launched his law practice in their apartment and struggled through making the business a go.
By 2000, Bill had built a successful family law practice and they owned the building where he worked. Kay labored alongside him as a paralegal and handled office management responsibilities. They had raised their children together, and were able to travel a bit.
In the 19th year of their marriage, however, Bill developed upper abdominal pain and was diagnosed with pancreatitis, or inflammation of the pancreas, which affects digestion. Facing a serious but non-life-threatening situation, Bill checked into the hospital for treatment of pancreatitis, but complications arose. He died of a massive coronary four days later at age 51.
"The doctor didn't foresee any of this," Kay recalls. "It was supposed to be routine, but Bill never came out of it. He checked in on a Monday, and died on a Friday. It was so sudden. We had just been on a vacation together."
Kay says the first six months after Bill's death felt like five years. "I was in ‘death time,’" she explains. After the funeral, she cloistered herself and didn't want to be around people. She worried about how she would make ends meet, and unwind the business assets, including selling the building. "It was overwhelming," she says. "It scared the heck out of me."
Fortunately, she knew all the finances quite well because she worked with Bill in the practice. But she had no way to keep it going as she didn't have a law degree or license to practice. She ultimately was able to turn over the active cases to another law firm, which took care of them, and gave her a percentage for several years. "That helped," she said.
Luckily, Kay and Bill had updated wills, insurance policies, and had named their beneficiaries correctly. "It's so important to get all the I's dotted that way," Kay explains. "I just lost an ex-brother-in-law who died without a will. He had been married to a second wife for six months, but was separated at the time of his death. Because he had no will, his only daughter and grandkids got nothing. His wife of six months, by law, got all the assets."
Kay says that with a business, it's particularly important to have contingency plans, and an estate attorney. She retained an estate attorney after Bill's death when he called to offer sympathy and help. It took nearly two years to settle all of the details.
Kay, 56, is now remarried to an architect she met on an online matching site. "I feel my late husband sent me my new husband. I feel I'm OK now," she concludes. "We all still think about Bill. He's always in our hearts. You never go back to the same life, but over time, you're able to meld together the old and the new."
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