said by morbo:those are rare cases. however, you should have an instruction guide for your spouse if it is not a shared responsibility. keep it safe and tell them where it is. problem solved. now get back to paperless!
I wouldn't say that they are rare cases. I think people go out of town, people get sent to Iraq, etc... I think it is perfectly reasonable to still get paper bills. I choose to have most of my household bills be paperless, but if something happened to me, it would be really difficult for someone else here to pay all the bills correctly. It used to be much easier with service like mycheckfree until many of the card companies chose not to allow their bills to be paid on the service. Now it is a lot more difficult to keep track of all the web sites needed to pay our bills. Paper may actually be easier...