The death of a spouse is probably one of the worst things most people endure. Unfortunately, there is a torrent of financial tasks that accompanies that event.
Women, who are far and away most likely to end up widowed, must also contend with how to manage a portfolio for one. But interference from the grave sometimes gets in the way.
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Take certified financial planner Kathleen Rehl's client, who came to her about a year before the financial crisis in 2007. As a financial planner who specializes in widows, Rehl is often asked by these women to look over their portfolios and recommend changes.
The portfolio revealed a passel of risky Asian stocks and high-octane growth names. "Some of these didn't even have tickers, they were so obscure," Rehl recounts. More than 90 percent of the investments were in stocks.
The woman was equally horrified by the inherent risk of such concentrated positions. For several weeks they worked together to create a portfolio that would better suit someone in her early 70s. But as Rehl was about to hit the Sell button at the woman's online brokerage, the widow said, "Stop! I can't do it."
Panic set in, and the client worried that by replacing the stocks with a more appropriate portfolio, she was betraying her late husband's wishes, because he had so enjoyed researching and trading the positions. "She said, 'It's like I'm saying everything you did for us is wrong,'" Rehl said.
Eventually, reason won out, but it took a lot of hand-holding on Rehl's part—and tears from her client—before the latter came around. And it didn't hurt that when the financial crisis hit a year later, the woman realized what would have happened to her own money situation if the original portfolio had remained.
In her practice, Rehl, a widow herself and author of "Moving Forward on Your Own: A Financial Guidebook for Widows," sees how grief can cloud judgment. Widows—who outnumber widowers by a factor of four—often place sentimental attachment on the investments made by their late spouses.
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Even with great strides in gender equality, many marriages still adhere to traditional gender roles around money: Women tend to manage the household finances, but men usually tend to the investments. Wives feel uneasy—and unprepared—about tampering with their husbands' investment ideas.
But it's crucial that they do. The average age of widowhood is 59 years old, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and many widows could go on to live another few decades after the death of their spouses.
Even with financial pros at their side, not all situations end as well as they do for Rehl's client.
This article originally appeared in CNBC.
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