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Checklist, for families — before they go

Before they go

Most of this period belongs to them. Your part is narrow, has deadlines, and is easy to miss entirely.

In order of what it costs you

The ten

  1. Get the handoff document while they can still answer questions

    Accounts, passwords, deadlines, contacts, and what you are authorized to decide without asking them. If they have not started it, make them start it.

    Read it now. The gaps you find today are the ones you would otherwise discover alone in eight months.

  2. Test the account access yourself

    Do not accept a description of access. Log in. Two-factor tied to a phone they will not have is the single most common way a family gets locked out of their own finances.

  3. Get a power of attorney executed

    Plus signature authority on anything that has to stay live, and autopay on anything whose lapse cascades — insurance, storage, the mortgage.

  4. Keep a copy of their presentence report

    They are not permitted to keep one inside. You may need to quote from it when a case manager gets something wrong, and you will not be able to get it later without effort.

    Keep their judgment and commitment order too. Both are the source documents for everything the Bureau will later tell you about their sentence.

  5. Write down their committed name and register number, exactly

    Exactly as they appear on the judgment. Nothing works without them — not mail, not money, not visiting. Wrong or missing register numbers are the most common reason things never arrive.

  6. Start the visiting paperwork before they report

    Approval means a form, a background check, and weeks of waiting. Families who start after they arrive lose their first few months of visits.

    The visiting chapter has the sequence and the dress code that turns people away at the door.

  7. Test the phone number they will be calling

    The system requires you to press a key to accept the call, and some virtual numbers do not pass that keypress through. Google Voice is the usual failure.

    Find out now, not when they are spending their minutes on a call that will not connect.

  8. Look at the household on one income

    Do the arithmetic before savings are gone rather than after. Check what benefits you may qualify for early — a great many families never check until it is too late to help.

  9. Do not panic-sell, and do not pay anyone who promises a facility

    Nobody can get them to a camp. Not a lawyer, not a consultant, not for any amount of money. The classification score is the score.

    Anyone charging you for placement is charging you for something they do not control, and that pitch has its own page.

  10. Decide what you tell the children, and tell them the truth

    Age-appropriate honesty holds up. Cover stories collapse, and the collapse is worse than the truth would have been.

The long version

Every item here stands in for a chapter of before they go. Their own list for this stage is the other checklist, and the two barely overlap, which is the point.

Next checklist — 2 of 3

While they're in

This is the stage where what you do changes the outcome. It is also the stage nobody tells you that you have a job at all.

Need help with this? Just ask.

These pages cover the general rules. Your situation has details they don't. Email me a question. Answers are free, and "you don't need to pay anyone for this" is my most common answer.

josh@federalprisondude.com

I answer in the order received, usually within a couple of days. I have a day job. If your situation genuinely needs more than an email, I take a limited number of consults, so say so and we'll work it out.

Pass it on

Someone else is sitting exactly where you are. Pass it on.