I recently heard from a longtime friend in Boston. His wife, long troubled by Multiple Sclerosis, had suffered a stroke at age 64. Her speech, coordination, strength and balance were profoundly affected. She was out of the hospital and in a rehabilitation facility, but the process of recovery will be slow and the outcome uncertain.

Because of her MS, she had been unable to work outside the home for years. An organized woman, she took over management of the family household. She crafted all the domestic contracts - with utilities, the mortgage company, the town and the bank. She paid all the bills. She kept all the records. She was thoughtful and kept them secure…in her computer, password protected. She went one step further – where she could, she used facial recognition to access her accounts. But here is where the problem begins: when she could no longer manage the household accounts because of her stroke, her overwhelmed husband had no way of accessing the data. He had no idea how she organized the computer files and no way of entering them. She had never shared the logins or passwords, never written them down. And now, she could not communicate them to anyone. Her face, profoundly altered by the stroke, was not recognized by the facial recognition software.

My friend is not foolish. He is just like us. In most American households, one person manages the finances and other business details of household life. It is a smart division of responsibility until it is not.  When the critical household administrator loses his/her capacity to manage details because of travel, illness, or death, the entire household goes into a functional tailspin.