The beneficiary was a woman whose name I had never seen before. I called the insurance company and told them I was the surviving spouse and needed to understand why statements were still being mailed here. The woman checked the account and said the annuity had been opened in 2018, just months before my husband got sick. I asked who had opened it, and she said the application was signed in person. My husband’s signature was on it, but the beneficiary had been added separately six months later. I asked who made that change, and she said it had been done with a power-of-attorney document.
I told her my husband had never given anyone power of attorney. She put me on hold and came back with the document number. It was filed at the county courthouse in 2021, two years after he died. I drove down there the next morning and asked for a copy. The clerk pulled the record and handed it to me without saying much. My husband’s name was on the first page, but the signature looked wrong. Then I saw the witness line. One of the witnesses was a woman whose name I recognized from an old address book my husband kept in his desk. She had been the person who helped him with his paperwork when he was sick.
I called her from the courthouse parking lot. She answered immediately, and when I told her about the annuity, she said she didn’t know what I was talking about. I asked why her name was on the power of attorney. She went completely silent. Then she asked me whether I’d found the second compartment in the mailbox. I asked how she knew about it. She said my husband had told her years ago that if anything happened to him, the money needed to go to someone who wasn’t me. I asked who. She finally gave me the name from the statements. And it was the same woman my husband had listed as an emergency contact on a hospital record I’d never seen.
