When people die, they leave behind a life that must be closed out. The funeral must be planned, bank accounts closed, pets placed in new homes, final bills paid.
When someone you love dies, the job of handling those personal and legal details may fall to you. It’s a stressful, bureaucratic task that can take a year or more to complete, all while you are grieving.
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The amount of paperwork can take survivors by surprise. “It’s a big responsibility,” emphasizes Bill Harbison, a trusts and estates lawyer in Nashville, Tennessee. “There are a lot of details to take care of.”
You can’t do it alone. Settling a deceased family member’s affairs is not a one-person task. You’ll need the help of others, ranging from professionals like lawyers or CPAs, who can advise you on financial matters, to a network of friends and relatives, whom you can delegate tasks to or lean on for emotional support. You may take the lead in planning the funeral and then hand off the financial details to the executor. Or you may be the executor, which means you’ll oversee settling the estate and spend months, maybe even years, dealing with paperwork.
To marshal the right help, you’ll need a checklist (see below) of all the things that need to be done, ranging from writing thank-you notes for flowers sent to the funeral to seeing a will through probate.
If your loved one died in a hospital or nursing home where a doctor was present, the staff will handle this. An official declaration of death is the first step to getting a death certificate, a critical piece of paperwork. But if your relative died at home, especially if the death was unexpected, you’ll need to get a medical professional to declare them dead. To do this, call 911 soon after your loved one passes and have them transported to an emergency room, where they can be declared dead and moved to a funeral home. If your family member died at home under hospice care, a hospice nurse can declare them dead. Without a declaration of death, you can’t plan a funeral, much less handle the deceased’s legal affairs.
Send out a group text or mass email, or make individual phone calls, to let people know your loved one has died. To track down all those who need to know, go through the deceased’s email and phone contacts. If you have been using an online platform (such as CaringBridge, Facebook or Lotsa Helping Hands) to share updates about your loved ones’ condition and organize support, you can tell people there. Inform neighbors, coworkers and the members of any social groups or church the person belonged to. Ask the recipients to spread the word by notifying others connected to the deceased. Put a post about the death on social media on both your account and the deceased person’s, if you have access.
Contact the deceased’s employer right away so they can handle payroll matters and workload. Find out if the employer offers death benefits and how any pension will be handled for the surviving spouse.
“Ideally, you had the opportunity to talk with your loved one about his or her wishes for funeral or burial,” writes Sally Balch Hurme, an elder law attorney and author of Checklist for Family Survivors. If you didn’t, she advises you look for a letter of instruction in the deceased’s papers or call a family meeting to have the first conversation about what the funeral or memorial service will look like. This is critical if your loved one left no instructions. You need to discuss what the person wanted in terms of a funeral and burial, what you can afford and what the family wants.
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If the deceased person lived alone, lock up their home and vehicle. Ask a friend or relative to water the plants, get the mail and throw out any food in the refrigerator. If there are valuables in the home, such as jewelry or cash, lock them up. “You have to watch out for valuable personal effects walking out,” Harbison says. Enlist a friend or neighbor to keep an eye on the home during the funeral or memorial service to ward off a potential burglary.
Make sure pets have caretakers until there’s a permanent plan for them. Send them to stay with a relative who likes animals or board them at a kennel. The pet will be grieving, so be sure they’re with someone who can comfort them.
Go to the post office and put in a forwarding order to send the mail to yourself or whoever is working with you to see to the immediate affairs. You don’t want mail piling up at the deceased’s home, telegraphing to the world that the property is empty. This is also the first step in finding out what subscriptions, creditors and other accounts will need to be canceled or paid. “The person’s mail is a wealth of information,” Harbison says. “Going through it is a practical way to see what the person’s assets and bills are. It will help you find out what you need to take care of.”
Get up to 10 copies of the death certificate. You’ll need death certificates to close bank and brokerage accounts, file insurance claims and register the death with government agencies, among other things. The funeral home you’re working with can get copies on your behalf, or you can order them from the vital statistics office in the state in which the person died.
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ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENTYour loved one’s survivors need to know where any money, property or belongings should go. Ideally, you talked with your relative before they died and they told you where they kept the will. If not, look for the document in a desk, a safe-deposit box (if you do not have a key or are not the co-owner, you will need a death certificate and proof that you are executor to access it) or wherever they kept important papers. People usually name an executor (the person who will manage the settling of the estate, also called the “personal agent”) in their will. The executor needs to be involved in most of the steps going forward. If there isn’t a will, the probate court judge will name an administrator in place of an executor.
While you don’t need an attorney to settle an estate, having one makes things easier. If the estate is worth more than $50,000, Harbison suggests that you hire a lawyer to help navigate the process and distribute assets. “Estates can get complicated, fast,” he says. The executor should pick the attorney.
If your loved one had an accountant, contact them; if not, hire one. The estate may have to file a tax return, and a final tax return will have to be filed on the deceased’s behalf. “Getting the taxes right is an important part of this,” Harbison says.
Probate is the legal process of executing a will. You’ll need to do this at a county or city probate court office. Probate court makes sure that the person’s debts and liabilities are paid and that the remaining assets are transferred to the beneficiaries.
Laws vary by state, but the probate process usually starts with an inventory of all assets (bank accounts, house, car, brokerage account, personal property, furniture, jewelry, etc.), which will need to be filed in the court. For the physical items in the household, Harbison suggests hiring an appraiser.
Part of the work of making that inventory of assets is finding them all. The task, called marshaling the assets, can be a big job. “For complex estates, this can take years,” Harbison says. There are search firms that will help you track down assets in exchange for a cut. Harbison recommends a DIY approach: Comb your family member’s tax returns, mail, email, brokerage and bank accounts, deeds and titles to find assets. Don’t leave any safe-deposit box or filing cabinet unopened.
Share the list with the executor so that important expenses like the mortgage, taxes and utilities are taken care of while the estate is being settled.
These include cellphone, streaming services, cable and internet. Remember to cancel ongoing home deliveries and services.
You have a couple of options for how to deal with your loved one’s passport. You do not have to return it; you can keep it as a memento, with the stamps on its pages reminding you of past adventures. If you’re worried about the possibility of identity theft, mail the passport to the federal government along with a copy of the death certificate and have it officially canceled. If you want the canceled passport returned, include a letter requesting that be done. You can also request the government destroy the passport after it’s been canceled.
This removes the deceased’s name from the records of the department of motor vehicles and prevents identity theft. Contact the agency for specific instructions, but you’ll need a copy of the death certificate. Keep a copy of the canceled driver’s license in your records. You may need it to close or access accounts that belonged to the deceased.
Contact customer service and tell the representative that you’re closing the account on behalf of a deceased relative who had a sole account. You’ll need a copy of the death certificate to do this, too. Keep records of accounts you close, and inform the executor of any outstanding balances on the cards. Credit bureaus, as part of their regular reporting process, will also send card issuers an alert that your relative has died. But if you want credit accounts notified faster, contact them directly. Be sure to cut up your dead loved one’s credit cards so they aren’t lost or stolen.
If the credit card account is shared with another person who intends to continue using it, keep the account open but notify the issuing bank of the death so the deceased’s name can be removed from the account. Destroy any cards with their name on them to prevent theft and identity fraud.
Contact providers to end coverage for the deceased on home, auto and health insurance policies, and ask that any unused premium be returned.
You can delete social media accounts, but some survivors choose to turn them into a memorial for their loved one instead. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram all allow a deceased person’s profile to remain online, marked as a memorial account. On Facebook, a memorialized profile stays up with the word “Remembering” in front of the deceased’s name. Friends will be able to post on the timeline. Whether you choose to delete or memorialize, you’ll need to contact the companies with copies of the death certificate. TikTok does not offer a memorial option for a deceased user’s account.
To prevent identity theft and fraud, shut down the deceased’s email account. If the person set up a funeral plan or a will, they may have included log-in information so you can do this yourself. If not, you’ll need copies of the death certificate to cancel an email account. The specifics vary by email provider, but most require a death certificate and verification that you are a relative or the estate executor.
Contact your state or county directly to find out how to remove your dead relative from the voting rolls. The rules vary by state. Some states get notifications from state and local agencies and will remove your dead relative from voter registration rolls automatically. States will also remove voters if a relative notifies them of the death. Depending on where your loved one was registered to vote, you may need to give notice of the death in writing, by affidavit or with a death certificate.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published June 11, 2020. It has been updated with more recent information.
