An excellent resource for handling personal effects is a workbook called Who Gets Grandma's Yellow Pie Plate? ($12.50) created by the University of Minnesota Extension Service, available at order@extension.umn.edu. Susan Richards, a Chicago certified financial planner and author of Protect Your Parents and Their Financial Health ... Talk With Them Before It's Too Late, encourages grown children not to let their parents rebuff them, as she was when she asked her late father about his estate plans and financial affairs.
When her father suffered a stroke, she was left to supervise his medical care without knowing what kind of health insurance he had, to repair his car (damaged when he suffered the stroke) without being able to locate his insurer, and pay his bills without having access to his checking account.
"If you don't know where things are," she says, "it's just such a tremendous hardship."
Even if parents are unwilling to discuss their estate plans, their children should strive to have them sign two critical documents to allow another trusted individual to manage for them should they be incapacitated: a durable power of attorney for financial matters and a durable power of attorney for health care.
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