What to do when a partner/spouse dies.

Hi, having lost my husband 6 months ago and have finally waded through all the paperwork and closed the estate accounts this week, here are a few of the things not on any organisations list that I found -
1) if you own a house and were tenants in common and plan to leave your half of the house in trust to children, it becomes almost impossible for the surviving partner to get a mortgage on a property held in Trust. I only found 2 banks which were willing - Nationwide and Virgin One, the latter only after begging not to make me and the children sell up or have to re-mortage with Nationwide. Make sure there is enough money to cover the mortgage or you could end up having to sell the house!
2) plots for the interment of cremated remains are tiny. You can hardly get near them to place flowers, let alone space for a child to lie on the grass and talk to their departed parent - ask for a burial plot, saying that you wish to be buried at a later date, and then the cremated remains can be placed in the plot first. Much more room. I know this sounds like a waste of valuable burial ground, but who knows what they want in the future - the children and I might all want to be buried in the plot with him!
3) Unison pay a death benefit to dependants following death of a member - it is not huge even after 15 years membership, but it all helps.
4) if you are doing probate yourself, no-one tells you that lump sums payable following a death, by an employer/pension are NOT part of the estate. To my simple mind (I have 2 degrees), all money coming in as a result of a death must be part of the estate!
5) If you want to apply for a deed of variation (as mentioned in other posts) in order to change a will, and children under 18 are beneficiaries, then you have to apply to the family courts to act on behalf of the children. Very expensive.
6) If you have children under 6 you can ask your employer to consider making your working arrangements more flexible - due to an EU law I believe, passed recently.
7) Some public sector pensions pay the full rate of pay of the deceased for between 3-6 months following death. This is then counted as the survivors income. So, if you happen to be just below the 40% tax rate as an individual prior to your bereavement, you may find you suddenly become a 40% rate payer due to money that might have been previously taxed at 22%. Therefore, you don't have as much net income as you did before the death, even though technically you have the same gross income.
8) On a similar note - widowed parents benefit is taxable and again you could find you're in the 40% bracket overnight.

That's all I can think of for the moment - hope it's appropriate. I was told about Martin's website just after my husband died, and am managing financially only because of such excellent advice and posts! Thankyou :-)

Short of a fire and water proof box (very expensive for the size most families would need to keep their docs in) the only other way I can think of to preserve important docs is to scan them, back up to an external hard drive (not as expensive as the fireproof box) and keep it in a metal container under the bathroom sink. Unless you have a really bad fire, and the whole house goes up, bathrooms don't tend to burn too well. Just put silica pads in the metal box. I've been doing it for 3 years and it still works fine.
Someone else told me they scan and upload to yahoo briefcase (free), which is an online data storage system, accessible from any PC with the right password. leave a note with solicitor/will with the password!). Personally not sure if I'd like my persoanl info out there on the web, but in theory it can't get lost.