006: Being the Executor Takes Longer Than You Think: A Daughter’s Journey (Part 2) – Nancy Noever

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (00:00)
Being the executor. Just how challenging is it? And how do you carry out your loved ones' wishes while you're grieving them? Let's learn about that journey, from someone who's been going through it.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (00:14)
Moving your mom or your dad or yourself isn't just about moving things from one place to another. It is much more complicated than that, as are so many things having to do with later life.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (00:29)
How to Move Your Mom and Still Be on Speaking Terms Afterward provides in-depth conversations with professionals, older adults and their family members, who share their stories with warmth, understanding, and humor. I'm your host, Marty Stevens-Heebner, and here you'll find answers to many of your questions, as well as different perspectives that I hope will inform and inspire you.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (00:54)
Welcome back, and I'm with Nancy Noever again, and we're going to talk about a whole different topic. Before, she spoke about what it was like as her mother was dying, and the decision to let her go according to her wishes, meaning her mother's wishes.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (01:12)
Now we're going to talk about the whole journey of being the executor of her mother's estate, because it's a whole different ball game, for lack of a better term. Nancy, thank you again so much for being here.

Nancy Noever: (01:26)
Oh, thanks so much for having me. I hope that some of this will help some other people. I know you've been a great support system for me, and to be able to answer questions as I was going through this.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (01:38)
Yeah. You know, I'm so glad you said that, and you put it so eloquently, because people, people bestow the role of executor, because yes, it's an honor. But the thing to remember for people is that once you become an executor, after someone has passed, you become the CEO of the estate.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (02:00)
Frequently, for a lot of families, that means you're have a big human resources problem, big HR problem. Because you have to deal with all that.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (02:10)
And there are so many questions, and we're going to be talking about what you learn through this process. It's been a year and a half. People think they can get it done so swiftly, and it takes time, and you have to be patient.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (02:23)
Before we get into all that, I want to formally introduce Nancy, and tell you what she does and all about her. Until recently, Nancy was a long Angeles-based production manager and line producer in the entertainment industry.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (02:36)
She'd been doing that for 25 years. But more importantly, her mother's death, the pandemic, and her desire for a career change all converged, in February and March of 2020, to set her on a completely new and unfamiliar path, in a new city, Huntsville, Alabama, on the other side of the country.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (02:58)
All right. So Nancy, let's go back to March, 2020. Your mother has passed.

Nancy Noever: (03:07)
I left my place in Los Angeles. I left on March 12th, and I put everything in storage, so I had packed up one life, my own. Then I was coming out to Huntsville, and pack up my mom's, and get the house ready to go on the market.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (03:25)
I just want to acknowledge the fact that when you left LA, you would put everything in a storage unit, your whole life. And how big was that storage unit?

Nancy Noever: (03:36)
It was a 10 X 15.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (03:40)
You had to do a lot of downsizing.

Nancy Noever: (03:42)
I did. Also, I have a Prius, so I had packed that to the gills.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (03:49)
You went one cross country that way, as COVID struck the entire world. I remember you telling me that experience of going cross country, as everything was starting to shut down.

Nancy Noever: (04:02)
As I'm leaving Los Angeles on the 10, going literally three miles an hour, my phone starts ringing. All the work that I was doing supposed to do for the next two months, it gets postponed.

Nancy Noever: (04:16)
I'm listening to NPR as I'm crossing state borders, and about halfway through, then I was talking with one of my friends, and they're like, "You should just go ahead and see America, because there's nothing going on."

Nancy Noever: (04:28)
Once I hit at Huntsville, then the probate courts had closed. So I didn't have the papers, to be able to get access to my mom's account.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (04:37)
Oh, wow.

Nancy Noever: (04:38)
Luckily, a very nice woman, who was very, very helpful at the credit union where my mom had her accounts, had a back door into the probate people, to actually get me copies of the documents that even my attorneys couldn't get. I was very grateful. That's when a small town works for you.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (05:00)
Yes, yeah. That' so true. That is so true.

Nancy Noever: (05:02)
Yeah.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (05:03)
One of the things that is vital is, that you have to get your hands on, is the death certificate, and multiple copies.

Nancy Noever: (05:11)
You need it for every time you have credit card accounts, anything that's dealing with money. Then you're going to need to have a death certificate for that organization.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (05:20)
Because again, when you become the executor, it's brand new to you.

Nancy Noever: (05:24)
Right.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (05:25)
You have this whole big learning curve, all the while that you're grieving. It's so difficult.

Nancy Noever: (05:30)
Yeah.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (05:31)
You get to Huntsville. What are your first thoughts? What do you get to work on?

Nancy Noever: (05:36)
The first one was to be able to get access to the financial accounts. My mom had a house, and a bunch of other things, a car, and then some account, financial accounts. So, 401k, and then, death benefits, and Social Security and things.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (05:52)
Let me ask you. Your mother was amazing, because she had everything set out. She had a plan, and that was had to be so helpful. Didn't she tell you that she wanted to be cremated? So you knew that ahead of time?

Nancy Noever: (06:10)
She showed me where everything was. She was a product of her parents, and the Depression, so that there was money hidden around the house, and she told me where most of that was.

Nancy Noever: (06:22)
My mom was also very paper-oriented, so the bills were all paper, or tangible. I didn't have to crack any kind of code on her laptop, I didn't have to go into any accounts. I had those passwords too.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (06:37)
You've got to have, keep track of those passwords, and have them available. They have to be written down or printed out somewhere, so that people can get access. If you have a safe, the combination, if it's a combination safe.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (06:52)
I remember years ago, my father showed me where everything was. He said, "Come on over here for a second." He was at his desk.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (06:59)
He pulled open the file drawer, and he said, "There's the will, there's the trust, there are the bank accounts," open another drawer. "There's the safe deposit key, at the bank."

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (07:09)
It was so helpful, to know where to go, and I was also honored that he trusted me so much. I'm sure you felt that way too, with your mom.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (07:21)
In addition to the estate plan, the second biggest gift you can give those you love, after you've passed, is that you have gone through everything in the house. Because my dad did that, and there was still so much to do. You're about a year and a half out now, from your mother's passing, and you're still dealing with a few more things.

Nancy Noever: (07:43)
Well, there are three things that really were characteristic of my mom. She was a quilter, she collected dolls, and because she had fashion dolls that she would make clothes for, and that were historically accurate.

Nancy Noever: (07:56)
The first thing that was most important was getting the quilting. She was a fabric artist. We were also in the middle of the pandemic, and they needed fabric to be able to make masks. It was beautiful fabric, it was high quality fabric, which made high quality masks.

Nancy Noever: (08:16)
In the end to various sources. I gave a 250 bankers' boxes full of fabric, to either mask makers, or the Huntsville Foundation, which made it back to the mask makers. And approximately 25,000 masks were made, that were distributed statewide, and regionally, and a couple of them even made them into some foreign country, through various people. My mom was doing NICU quilts, baby quilts?

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (08:45)
Can you say what NICU stands for?

Nancy Noever: (08:48)
Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, for the small babies. Then my mom was doing a service project, and she had approximately 54 quilt tops that were done, but it still needed to be quilted, in order for it to be something to give to somebody.

Nancy Noever: (09:06)
Her quilting friends, a really wonderful woman and her friends, Barbara Black, and the so-and-sos here in Huntsville, there were 12 of them I believe, and they were just amazing. They finished the quilts for my mom, and we were able to donate them to the local hospital here, to the NICU, 54 baby quilts that were donated.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (09:30)
It's really interesting, because you had told me that one of the reasons your mother didn't really want a memorial service is because you thought she was afraid, no one would come, and yet, you had this huge support system.

Nancy Noever: (09:43)
I did. And I think my mother would be astounded at the impact that she had on this group of people, and how much she had touched their lives, and how much they respected her quilting skills, as well.

Nancy Noever: (09:58)
I think we often don't value ourselves in the way that others do, but between that, and the students that my mother taught as a history professor, she touched a lot of lives over her lifetime. And what's been important to me is to extend that legacy, so that her quilting continued to live on.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (10:20)
People pass. I think, in our society, we think that's the end. Look at how much your mother did, even after she passed, how she was able to touch even afterward, so many people.

Nancy Noever: (10:33)
Yeah.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (10:33)
It's remarkable.

Nancy Noever: (10:35)
Yeah, and I met so many. It also gave me a connection into some people here in Huntsville, that were able to help me grieve, and be a support system locally.

Nancy Noever: (10:47)
Then we had an estate sale, that was just of quilting supplies, and it was a two-day sale, and it was lots of people. But I know that the quilting materials went to people who value them and can use them, so they're in someone's home. My mom had a saying that if you are covered in a quilt, then you're wrapped in love.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (11:11)
Your mother was such an extraordinary artist. And just how precise you have to be in quilting, the little corners that have to be sewn precisely.

Nancy Noever: (11:20)
My mom was very skilled in all of that. It was an immense amount of fabric, because she loved fabric. She would put them in clear containers, and they would be stacked up, but she could see her fabric every day, and she knew what was what, and she could tell you a story about it.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (11:35)
Clearly, you did such a wonderful job, preserving and respecting your mother's legacy. Why was that so important to you?

Nancy Noever: (11:47)
That's an easy answer, in some ways. Because it was a way to honor her, and it was a way that I could still connect to her.

Nancy Noever: (11:57)
And it was a way to say thank you for what she had done for me. And she may not know that, but I know that. And to me, it's a way to honor her.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (12:07)
That's beautiful. With who we are, and our various emotional, personal and professional skill sets, which ones did you really have to draw on, and which really served you well?

Nancy Noever: (12:19)
I have been a production manager and a producer, and the industry, the whole idea is to keep the camera rolling. So you learn how to survive in a very dynamic make situation, in which you have to learn a lot of things sometimes on the fly.

Nancy Noever: (12:38)
Those skills were very helpful to me in combating, or combating's the wrong word, in just completing the tasks that were I had. And I had a notebook that I wrote down every day what I was doing, and all the numbers that were important.

Nancy Noever: (12:58)
The tenacity that you need to have, being able to have, in some ways, to compartmentalize, and have tunnel vision on the tasks ahead, the ability to be calm under very dynamic situations, those are all good skills to have.

Nancy Noever: (13:20)
The people skills are also very good too. In my case, it wasn't my family, but I was dealing with people who were stressed out, because of COVID.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (13:27)
To go back to the first few months after COVID, and were all desperately trying to figure things out, and then in your case, that was compounded by having to do all the tasks that an executor has to do, and including, arranging the burial, and all of that. All the while too, there's COVID, there's being the executor, and you're grieving.

Nancy Noever: (13:52)
Yes.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (13:52)
How-

Nancy Noever: (13:52)
And I'm grieving alone, because I'm in a house by myself. Again, we were all under lockdown, and there were things that needed to get done, and there were things that needed to get done for the house to be able to put it up on, on the market.

Nancy Noever: (14:07)
But every time you brought somebody into your house, at that time, we didn't have the vaccines, and we didn't know what we were doing. So there was a risk involved in that. And then, I have a brother, but it was also a risk to his family. So I ended up doing a lot of it by myself.

Nancy Noever: (14:25)
COVID is a unique time in history. A lot of the stuff that you have to deal with, in terms of family, in terms of your own grief, in terms of tasks, in terms of finding things out about your loved one that you necessarily didn't know, when they were alive?

Nancy Noever: (14:46)
Some of that can be good, some of that can be bad. And I think those are things, that COVID just added another layer of it to it, but it also gave me some time.

Nancy Noever: (14:56)
The world stopped. So it gave me some time to recover, and to be able to be in my, sucking my thumb and holding my pillow.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (15:06)
I know there were times when you felt like you weren't making progress, but you were, and it just takes time, even in the best of situations, without COVID. Just in general, when you're being an executor, you do a lot of waiting.

Nancy Noever: (15:21)
Yeah. And I'm at the point now where I'm waiting. My mom's final tax return is done. The major assets of the estate have been sold. Now I'm waiting on the 2021 tax forms to be printed, which won't happen until January of 2022, to be able to close out the estate.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (15:42)
You're already at year and a half into being the executor. So it's going to be a good two years.

Nancy Noever: (15:47)
Yeah.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (15:48)
Then maybe you'll be able to step out of it. I'm so glad you and your brother managed to get along during this whole time, so you didn't [inaudible 00:15:56].

Nancy Noever: (15:55)
We did, and that's a really important thing, I think, although I did a lot of the work myself, and he's there to be a sounding board.

Nancy Noever: (16:03)
He was also open to listening to what was going on, and I would say, "This is what I'm going to do. Are you okay with it?" If he wasn't, then we'd have a discussion, and figure out a way to work it out for both of us.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (16:16)
What do you know now, that you wish you had known, when you first had to take this on?

Nancy Noever: (16:22)
If I known what I know now, I think I would have counseled my mom to do a couple of things like a payable on demand, or payable upon death for a lot of her accounts, which would have made it easier to do stuff. You can establish a beneficiary that's payable upon death, which means whoever is the beneficiary needs to just show a death certificate for the individual, and then those funds go directly to you. They're not considered an inheritance, because they aren't gone through probate.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (16:51)
People don't realize when someone passes, how much money you need, almost immediately, for the funeral, for the casket, for the cremation urn, and then just finishing up their financial lives for them.

Nancy Noever: (17:12)
Everyone's experience may be different. Alabama's laws are very different than California's laws are.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (17:17)
Oh yeah.

Nancy Noever: (17:21)
You have to know what your local laws are. You should get a local lawyer in the vicinity, in which the probate court's going to end up happening, occurring.

Nancy Noever: (17:32)
It's a relatively simple process, and yet it's still very complicated. There's so much more involved in this than I ever would imagine.

Nancy Noever: (17:41)
One of the things I think I'm glad that I did from the very beginning is to document everything. You should keep a daily diary of who you're contacting, and what their outcomes of stuff is.

Nancy Noever: (17:53)
You should have addresses and contact numbers of who you talked to, at whatever place it was, and what website and e-mail, and all those kinds of things. Because something may come up six months away from when you last did it.

Nancy Noever: (18:08)
Again, as you've mentioned, you're in grieving, and you think you're doing really, really well. But some days, you're really not.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (18:15)
You're not. And you get exhausted. I mean, grief exhausts you, even if you're not the executor.

Nancy Noever: (18:20)
There's going to be so many people that want to get involved in it, so if you have it documented, and just written down some place. Then you have a way to be able to combat some of that, and simplify your life, and talk to the lawyer.

Nancy Noever: (18:34)
One of the things I started dealing with the attorney is that I would give them monthly updates, and I gave it to my brother, as well. And it would have, "This is what I took care of, these are the checks that were written," so that there was a document that both the attorney had, and my brother.

Nancy Noever: (18:51)
So if there were any kind of questions about what I was doing, there was a record of it. Everybody's estate is going to be different.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (18:59)
I'm just curious. Throughout all this, because you were in isolation, as where we all, because of the pandemic. Did your sense of time shift while you were going through all this?

Nancy Noever: (19:12)
Absolutely, and it still is to some extent. You don't know what day it is. Weekends melt into weeks.

Nancy Noever: (19:21)
One of the things that was very helpful with me having a daily journal is that whenever I thought, "Oh, my gosh, I'm not moving very fast on all of this," I could go back and look and see what I had done.

Nancy Noever: (19:31)
I could also see where I was, "Okay, I'm caught up in something. What's stopping me? What task am I putting off, either emotionally or physically?"

Nancy Noever: (19:40)
Then there are days, like there was one day when I was cleaning out some stuff in the kitchen, and I found a tea towel that I did, when I was in third grade, that my mom had kept. And that just stopped me.

Nancy Noever: (19:52)
You just need to know that there're going to be days, as you're going through stuff, or there's a question that I want to ask about something, and I'm like, "Oh, no, I can't ask Mom about that. Oh, I can't ask Dad about that."

Nancy Noever: (20:04)
And also, having to deal with the pandemic, and also, with my own grief. Because I'm moved away from my support group, and what I had known for 25 years in Los Angeles.

Nancy Noever: (20:16)
You have to redefine who you are, and what's safe, in the view that you don't have this parent who's always been there with you. And that assumes you had a good relationship with your parent, and a bunch of stuff that way.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (20:30)
I've talked to people who did not get along. But there's still this emptiness, almost like a little bit of, I don't want to call it fear, but discomfort.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (20:39)
So we feel multiple emotions at once. Because there's this weird bit of freedom, that people, that I know I felt. It didn't compensate for all the grief I felt, but it was a surprising emotion.

Nancy Noever: (20:53)
For those that didn't have a good relationship with their parents, you don't get a chance to reconcile that. You can't have that moment in which they, whatever judgment you felt like you had, or lack of love, or substance abuse issues, or whatever you had with your parent, you don't have that moment to reconcile.

Nancy Noever: (21:15)
But it also brings out family dynamics that were at play when you were kids, that now are not. Again, I'm very lucky and that I have a good family situation, but I have heard stories, and I'm sure you have, as well.

Nancy Noever: (21:30)
The attorney was also very blunt with that, and also told, at the very first meeting I had with her after my mom's death, then my brother was also on the line, and she was very open and said, "Look, she's going to be the executor, and she's going to get an executor's fee. That's legal, and not part of the discussion of all of this."

Nancy Noever: (21:51)
Most of the laws, like in Alabama, it's two and a half percent out, and two and a half percent in. So it basically is five percent of what the estate is. As I'm going through all the boxes I'm going, "Oh my God, my hourly wage is nothing."

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (22:04)
It's a penny an hour, basically.

Nancy Noever: (22:06)
Yeah, yeah.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (22:08)
That's basically what it is.

Nancy Noever: (22:08)
Yeah.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (22:08)
And it does take up such a substantial portion of your life. I just want to say and recommend to people, that it's really important to name one person, as you just said here, and as your trustee, if you have a trust. Your healthcare directive, one person,

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (22:26)
I was lucky. My father had named myself and my sister, and there are some issues there. Thankfully, we both agreed, towards my father's end, what to do, but I was lucky. So one person needs to be the decision maker.

Nancy Noever: (22:41)
Having a bunch of people in that decision point is difficult. As the person who's making that decision, you need to not second guess yourself with it, because it could weigh very, very heavily on you in ways that are surprising later on.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (22:58)
What plans have you made for your own departure?

Nancy Noever: (23:05)
I have decided I want to make it as simple as possible. So I'm pretty clear in what I want to have done.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (23:16)
And that's written down somewhere?

Nancy Noever: (23:17)
It's written down. I have also expressed it to multiple friends, and people who might be involved with it at the end. I've had-

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (23:26)
We've had those discussions, you and I together.

Nancy Noever: (23:29)
... Absolutely. And my brother, I have had very open discussions with him about what it is.

Nancy Noever: (23:35)
I'm not married, I don't have children, so there is a different kind of legacy I think I will leave, than other people would. I think my legacy needs to be in who I am now, not in who I will be once I've passed.

Nancy Noever: (23:55)
My stuff is my stuff, and it's great for me now. Then I need to have no illusions that anybody else is going to want it.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (24:03)
Yes, and thank you for saying that, because that's so true. One of the things we do is, we call them clearouts, when someone has passed, going through the different items. And so many people, especially the older generation now, the people in their eighties, nineties, and 100, they want to give it to their kids and their kids don't want it. They don't use China sets.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (24:28)
At this point, a year and a half into this, do you feel like you're more towards feeling like you're going towards a new beginning? Or are you still having those feelings of an ending, in terms of your mother's passing, and things like that?

Nancy Noever: (24:47)
I think I'm still in the middle of it. So I think the big things are done. I think I've started dealing with the grief, and making decisions about my own future.

Nancy Noever: (25:01)
So I'm hopeful in one sense, and I'm sad in another, but I'm still in the middle of it. And I think I will still feel like I'm in the middle of it, until the last bit of stuff is taken care of.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (25:16)
You have told me something really interesting, is that you think people die as they have lived.

Nancy Noever: (25:23)
Yes.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (25:24)
What do you mean about that? Talk to me about that some.

Nancy Noever: (25:32)
I think however you are in the world is how you go out in the world. If you're afraid of the future, then you're going to be very scared about death, and it's going to have a bigger prominence in your desire to stick around, or to have more care.

Nancy Noever: (25:51)
My father was the eternal optimist. And my father wanted to live to be 100. He died when he was 84, and was pretty much, up until the moment he died, he still thought he could live to be 100, and with health failing.

Nancy Noever: (26:09)
He didn't need much, and he wasn't really particularly organized. He was much of a dreamer. My mom, on the other hand, was very practical.

Nancy Noever: (26:19)
She had it all laid out for me, she was very clear. I've learned much more about dolls and sewing machines, and quilting fabrics, and fabric piles, than I ever thought I would ever want to know.

Nancy Noever: (26:31)
And most of it, I'm going to dispose of. But it also brings me closer to my mom at different points in time, too.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (26:39)
You are a good daughter, Ms. Nancy, and your mother was very fortunate in that. And I know also, you were so close to your mom, and that was really lovely as well. She was a good mom.

Nancy Noever: (26:50)
Again, as much research and, and preparation as you can do, it won't be enough. Some of it, you're just going to have to wing.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (27:01)
Yeah, take a breath, make sure you have an attorney to talk to, and some friends, and go from there. By the way, anybody who works with older adults your estate planning attorney will have, if you need other resources, they usually are well tapped into the whole community of people who work with older adults.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (27:21)
So that's really helpful. Thank you again, Nancy. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening to How to Move Your Mom and Still Be on Speaking Terms Afterward.

Marty Stevens-Heebner: (27:32)
Please visit how to moveyourmom.com for more information about this episode, and for additional podcast episodes, featuring other extraordinary guests and conversations. Until next time, this is your very grateful host, Marty Stevens-Heebner.