Popular Actress Details the Unplanned Death of Her Husband
Actor Natascha McElhone details her grief following the unexpected death of her husband in her new book, After You. The book is composed of letters McElhone wrote to her late husband, Martin Kelly, after he died. At the time of Kelly’s death, McElhone was pregnant with their third child and no one suspected the seemingly healthy 43-year-old man to have any health problems.
No Will and Badly Sold Life Insurance
According to the “Guardian,” a friend of the family discovered Kelly collapsed at the front door of the couple’s London home, where he died of heart failure. What follows, as McElhone details in her diary, can only be described as a nightmare.
Kelly had not left a will and had a “badly sold life-insurance policy,” per the “Guardian.” In addition, the only way McElhone could access her late husband’s money so she could support her family was to sue her own children; the money was in a trust the children could not access until the age of 18.
Had Kelly created a will and a living trust, McElhone and her children may have had an easier time accessing the much-needed funds. Many services to create wills and trusts today are available online.
The Grief of a Wife and Her Children
The birth of McElhone youngest son, Rex, helped the grieving family find comfort in the father’s death. McElhone states in her book that her eldest son wrote a poem about his father’s “soul flying out of one window and coming through another into Rex’s’.” Learn more about children and grief.
In one of the letters to her husband, McElhone asks her late husband, “Does your spirit die if I don’t keep blowing air into it? …My grief for you is also my love for you fighting for its last few breaths.”
Funeral preplanning and end-of-life plans are essential to those in all walks of life and at all levels of fame, as one can see from McElhone’s experiences. Learn more about funeral preplanning and creating a last will, living will or living trust.
[photo: Wikipedia]
