When Stacey’s husband died unexpectedly, she faced going broke within a year

Nick Lutton celebrated the new year with a fresh chapter in mind — he and his wife had just sold their home and bought an acreage in Queensland, where they would soon move with their young family.

But a few hours into 2025, he went into cardiac arrest from heart failure and died on the floor of their Wilton home, aged 44.

“I found my phone, called triple zero, and started CPR,” his widow, Stacey Lutton, recalls tearily.

Her 11-year-old daughter Evie had also awoken.

“I told her, ‘You need to call Nana and tell her I’m doing CPR on Daddy and to come now,’ and my daughter did that for me,” she says.

Grief arrived swiftly for Lutton. So did financial uncertainty.

A middle-aged woman is standing in a small living room holding a framed photo of a man. A young boy is sitting on a couch behind her.

Nick Lutton died suddenly from heart failure, leaving behind his wife Stacey (pictured) and three children under the age of 12. Source: SBS News / Mridula Amin

Lutton’s husband had been the family’s primary earner, and soon after his death, the 41-year-old stay-at-home mother of three found herself facing financial hardship with few safety nets.

“When your person dies, your brain just does not work properly,” she says of trying to navigate complex financial decisions while grieving.

The legal and financial paperwork that follows a death can be daunting, particularly for those widowed young; a will or estate planning may not exist, which leaves them unprepared and without a roadmap.

The Australian government’s social security system, administered under Services Australia, provides financial assistance to some widows who are already receiving income support through a one-off bereavement payment of up to 14 weeks.

To be eligible for this payment, applicants must have been receiving government benefits for at least the previous 12 months.

A middle-aged woman wearing a white shirt and denim skirt hugs a young girl who is wearing a pink top and black shorts while standing in a garden.

Stacey Lutton’s daughter Evie (right) was present when her husband Nick went into cardiac arrest. Source: SBS News / Mridula Amin

The government previously offered a means-tested payment for widows not claiming income support, like Lutton, known as the Bereavement Allowance. It provided support for up to 14 weeks, but the payment was ceased on 20 March 2020.

Lutton found herself ineligible for government support. A lump-sum payout, she says, would have helped her cover basic needs, counselling for her children and living costs — and offered some breathing room.

Within days of Nick’s death, Lutton was scrambling to undo their pending home sale and back out of their Queensland purchase.

She was successful but was left with a $700,000 mortgage and no income to cover the repayments. It was the exact scenario she and Nick had wanted to avoid.

A middle-aged woman with sandy brown hair, wearing a white shirt and denim skirt, stands in her backyard holding a small pink flower.

Without government support or a life insurance payout, Stacey Lutton quickly found herself in financial distress. Source: SBS News / Mridula Amin

Limited options

Six months before his death, Nick had submitted an application for life insurance to his superannuation company, but Lutton says it was rejected due to being “high-risk”.

“He was so disappointed,” she says.

I don’t know if it was because he was a concreter, or if it was his high blood pressure, but they just said no.

In hindsight, Lutton wishes the company had counteroffered — suggesting a lower payout, explaining the concerns, and providing options.

An old photo of a couple on their wedding day, with the bride wearing a white gown and veil on the left, and the groom in a black suit with a cream tie.

Nick Lutton (right) worked as a concreter and suffered from high blood pressure. Source: SBS News / Mridula Amin

Without life insurance, the financial plan Lutton and her husband had painstakingly crafted fell apart.

Their solution had been to move, reducing their mortgage from $700,000 to $300,000: an amount Lutton could manage once she finished her teaching degree. Nick had already lined up a new job. The move was supposed to be their safety net.

With the sale reversed and no government support or insurance to fall back on, Lutton was left with few options.

She eventually accessed Nick’s $100,000 superannuation balance, secured a three-month mortgage freeze, and applied for a $489-per-week single parenting payment via Services Australia.

A GoFundMe campaign set up by a friend raised an additional $13,000, which helped cover funeral costs.

But her expenses — totalling $2,000 a week, including mortgage payments — meant Lutton would run out of money within a year.

A woman with sandy hair sits on a bunk bed with three children: two young boys and a girl.

Some state and territory governments offer financial support to cover funeral costs for those who can’t afford it. Source: SBS News / Mridula Amin

“In September, I made the decision I couldn’t hold onto the house, and it finally sold in February,” Lutton says.

Since then, she and her three children — Blake, 12; Evie, 11; and Patrick, 6 — have moved into her parents’ house, sharing a bedroom with bunk beds.

Now, she’s facing yet another tough financial decision.

“I will get to 60 and be homeless if I spend this money [from the house sale] on rent. But then it’s not enough to buy something here either, and so I will have to move away from my support network,” she says.

A middle-aged woman with sandy brown hair wears a white top and sits on the bottom bunk of a bunk bed, looking off into the distance.

Stacey Lutton says a one-off payment would have given her family some “breathing space”. Source: SBS News / Mridula Amin

Making the money last

Ron Pratap is a director and senior financial planner at RP Wealth Management, which has 20 widowed clients using its services currently.

He says when widows receive a lump sum payout, the next step is helping them to make the money last long-term.

We’re not just planning for the next two to five years of your life, but planning until retirement or until your life expectancy.

Pratap says understanding a widow’s financial position involves evaluating assets, liabilities, expenses, and policies.

“[We ask:] What insurance policies can we access? They might provide immediate relief when it comes to funding funeral expenses. Should loans be consolidated? Is withdrawing from superannuation for financial hardship an option?” he explains.

Financial advice, however, is not always within reach. The cost of professional planning has risen over the past five years due to regulatory changes.

According to the 2024 Australian Advice Landscape Report, the median fee for financial planning jumped 58 per cent from $2,510 in 2018 to $3,960 in 2023.

Pratap says he charges $450 for an initial consultation, a sum that many grieving spouses cannot easily spare.

Pratap says widows need an ‘A-team’ to navigate the complex paperwork.

“That A-team can be a financial adviser, a mortgage broker, a solicitor or someone that’s your accountant. But if you’re in financial hardship, it might not be all those people. It might be just the mortgage broker is the first step, and then working your way up to have a team of people that can support you.”

For those estate-planning ahead of time, he says it’s important to check binding nominations are updated every few years for superannuation as well as the fine print on life insurance policies.

‘I had to prove our relationship existed’

Heather Kilsby’s partner Dan died suddenly at their home in Botany, NSW, last September from a seizure. They had been together for 25 years and had a four-year-old son, though they were not married.

That detail, she soon discovered, was a problem.

“We didn’t have a will and we weren’t legally married. I had to constantly prove our relationship existed just to access his superannuation and income protection. It was like, how dare I want to get some money as a sort of girlfriend,” she says.

A middle-aged woman with shoulder-length brown hair wears a black blouse and glasses and is standing in a park.

Heather Kilsby had been with her partner for 25 years when he died. She says she constantly had to “prove” their relationship. Source: SBS News / Mridula Amin

Because Dan died at home, a coroner’s investigation was required. That night, Kilsby and her son were asked to leave their home by police. They had no family nearby.

“The police didn’t ask me if I could drive, or have enough money to eat, or check some basic human needs during the process,” she says.

Soon after, their joint offset account was frozen. Then, Kilsby’s Medicare card was cancelled — it had been linked to Dan’s.

She had to call and get the decisions reversed, balancing her full-time job with sorting out the paperwork.

It’s just protocol, they kept saying. But it adds so much stress.

With the difficulty of untangling shared assets and dealing with procedural paperwork, she believes there should be a place where widows can go to access professional financial and legal advice in person.

A middle-aged woman with short dark hair and wearing a black dress sits on a wooden bench in a park.

Heather Kilsby says widow support services need greater government funding. Source: SBS News / Mridula Amin

Kilsby is a member of the First Light Widowed Association, a charity organisation that helps widows connect and share information, but says its reliance on donations is limiting.

“The general chatting and newsletter does help in a small way but for First Light to be truly beneficial, it needs more funding to support its members and their specific needs,” Kilsby says, of the need to better resource services catering to widows.

Long-term sacrifices

Like Lutton and Kilsby, Chris Parton knows how hard it can be to regain financial stability once it’s lost.

For six years, he was a full-time caregiver for his wife, Mel, who had spinocerebellar ataxia, a neurodegenerative disorder that affects the cerebellum.

He left his decade-long career in IT in 2013 to help support Mel full-time as her condition worsened. They relied on a combination of carer benefits and disability support payments from the government and switched their $280,000 mortgage to interest-only payments.

A middle-aged man with short grey hair wears a taupe sweater and stands in front of a pond in a park.

Chris Parton was a full-time carer for his wife for six years before she passed away. Source: SBS News / Mridula Amin

When Mel died in 2019, it was heartbreaking for Parton.

“Even though I’ve been caring for a long time, it still came as a shock,” he says.

Parton was eligible for the government’s lump sum bereavement payment, given he was receiving income support already. He then transitioned to JobSeeker payments as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in 2020.

“I remember lining up at Centrelink for two hours to explain I was a carer who’d been widowed, but they just go, ‘No, you’re a job seeker, it’s all online’. You get lumped in,” he says.

Having spent over six years out of the workforce completely, Parton had fallen behind on IT certifications and training, the cost of which is prohibitive.

Now 45, he says he has found the job hunt challenging and employment providers unhelpful.

A middle-aged man with greying hair wears a taupe sweater and sits on a bench in a park under dappled light.

Chris Parton has found returning to the workforce challenging. Source: SBS News / Mridula Amin

“I apply for four jobs a day across IT, customer service, even jobs delivering mail. I also do volunteering to keep my resume updated,” Parton says.

He has withdrawn $10,000 of his superannuation — the maximum allowed for financial hardship — to help manage costs. However, he says he’s four months away from being forced to sell his house and is now living in long-term poverty.

Chris argues that government investment should focus not just on lump-sum assistance but on employment services tailored to widows and longtime caregivers.

If the government can spend $100 million on a road, they can invest in programs to actually help people get back on their feet.

‘Nothing out there’

Back in Wilton, Lutton watches her three kids play in her parents’ yard.

Over the past few weeks, she’s forged a plan to secure her family’s future: She’s bought a block of land in Hervey Bay, where she intends to build a house and rent it out. The goal is to generate rental income to supplement her eventual salary, paving a path towards long-term stability.

Selling her home was painful, but it brought relief from the overhanging debt.

A middle-aged woman sits in a grassy backyard surrounded by three children: two boys and a girl.

Stacey Lutton and her kids, Evie, Patrick and Blake, have been living with her parents in Wilton, NSW. Source: SBS News / Mridula Amin

Looking back, Lutton wishes she and Nick had thought about life insurance when they were newly married in their 20s and in perfect health.

“Life insurance is so hard to get when you’re a male in your 40s, I don’t think there was enough information.

“I wish I had known there was nothing out there.”

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