When the unexpected occurs, and you find yourself facing the future without the person you intended to share it with, what are the financial and personal implications? Brett Schatto talks about what he’s learned from those in this very situation.

I had a meeting last week. It was similar to many meetings I’ve had before.

The client had lost their partner to cancer more than two years ago. Both had been long term clients, and we’d worked together for years to ensure they had a good life.

The surviving partner continues to work with us and we continue to provide support, care and comfort. Financial matters many seem dry on the surface, but they touch every aspect of your lives. It’s not unusual for my meetings to turn into quasi-counselling sessions, less about the money and more about life and relationships.

In every relationship, one has to go before the other. Sometimes the gap is only hours, sometimes it’s decades. Financial planning focuses on the future and eliminating unwanted surprises so when the curtain comes down, you go out with a smile on your face, knowing you’ve built a legacy for your partner and your kids.

But what about the surviving partner? How do they negotiate the decades left to them?

The Financial Aspect

Marriage comes with more complexity the second time around, particularly if either party has kids from previous relationships. How do you provide for step children without disinheriting your own? This is a topic I’ve explored previously, and my advice remains the same: lay it all on the table.

The questions you need to ask each other (and discuss with your financial adviser) aren’t easy, but they are necessary to a healthy relationship. If you own a house, what happens to it if you die before your new partner? Do they get it, or do your kids? What about other benefits and payouts? Does your estate leave room for your new partner to divert any inheritance to their own children and away from yours?

Yes, these are awkward questions, but they’re important. Far better to know early on what sort of expectations each party holds, rather than getting a nasty surprise further down the track.

The Personal Aspect

But before we even have to consider the above conversation, we first need to figure out when it’s the right time to move on and find a new companion.

I remember one of the last conversations I had with my business partner, Katie, before she died of cancer in 2010. She acknowledged her husband would grieve, needed to grieve, but he was still young and had the majority of his life ahead of him.

The perspective she leant me was from a wife and a mother who knew she was dying. She knew she had days to live and there’d be no more trips home. Her hospital room was the last room she’d sleep in before the curtains came down.

With crystal clarity, Katie asked me to give her husband 12 months to grieve and find a new normal. Then, profoundly, she made me promise to give him a kick up the backside if he wasn’t in the headspace to move on and find new love. She said he was a wonderful person and she was lucky to have shared her life with him. It gave her comfort believing he would find love again.

Since that time, I’ve had similar conversations with others. It’s made me realise that what might be right for the surviving partner may not be right for the rest of the family.

When kids are involved, their grief of losing a parent is different; they don’t get to move on and find another mum or dad.

It can be awkward for the surviving partner, who wants someone to go to dinner with, see a movie with, maybe travel with. It’s difficult when family dynamics and expectations aren’t aligned.

So do you stay single, perhaps hide a new friendship from others?

Or should you be open and risk getting a cold shoulder from family members and/or people who you have been friends with for many years, simply because their view of what your life should be differs to yours?

For the record, Katie’s husband found new love and remarried. Katie’s parents love his new partner, and her daughter calls her mum.