After-death checklist: who to notify and which accounts to close

Week one is the paperwork that unlocks everything else: the certificates, the Social Security report, the bank. Month one is the accounts. The remaining eleven months are the things that only surface when a bill or a renewal notice arrives.

This page assumes the funeral arrangements are handled and the death certificates are ordered. If you are earlier than that, start with what to do in the first 72 hours.

First, the certificate question that governs every call

Nearly every task below asks for proof of death, and institutions do not agree on what counts. Getting this wrong means either ordering too few certificates or mailing your only originals into a system that will not send them back.

Institution	What they usually want	Notes
Bank, brokerage, credit union	Certified original	Often kept. Assume one per institution
Life insurance	Certified original	Filed with the claim
Pension or annuity provider	Certified original	Usually kept
Title, deed, or vehicle transfer	Certified original	Filed with the county or DMV
IRS and state tax filings	Certified original in some cases	Varies by filing
Social Security	Usually none from you	The funeral home normally reports it
Credit bureaus	Photocopy	Mailed with a request to flag the file
Utilities, phone, internet	Photocopy	Many now accept an emailed scan
Subscriptions and memberships	Photocopy, sometimes nothing	Most simply cancel
Employer or former employer	Photocopy	HR keeps one for benefits
USPS mail forwarding	Not sufficient on its own	See below

The USPS row catches nearly everyone, and it is worth quoting exactly. To forward a deceased person's mail, USPS requires that you

Provide documented proof that you are the appointed executor or administrator authorized to manage the deceased's mail. (Simply having their death certificate is not enough.)

and that the change of address request be completed in person at a Post Office. So mail forwarding waits on the court appointment, not on the certificate. If nobody is being appointed because the estate is small, forwarding may not be available to you at all, and the practical answer becomes collecting the mail at the address.

For how many certified copies to order in the first place, see how many death certificates do I need.

Week one

Report the death to Social Security. The funeral home usually does this, and usually is not a guarantee. Verify rather than assume. Benefits paid for the month of death onward generally have to be returned, and money that keeps arriving is money someone will ask for back. See notify Social Security of a death, and survivor benefits for what a spouse or child may be owed.

Locate the will, and find out who is filing it. Most states require whoever holds the original to deliver it to the court within a set window, commonly ten to thirty days. That duty applies even to someone who intends to decline serving as executor.

Secure the property. The empty house, the car, the pets, the medications. If the home is now unoccupied, tell the homeowner's insurer, because many policies change coverage on a vacant property and a lapse here is expensive.

Do not close the main checking account. It is where direct deposits land and automatic payments leave from, and closing it early creates months of untangling. Watch what moves through it, then close it once you know what it carries.

Contact the employer. Final paycheck, unused vacation, life insurance through work, a 401(k), and continuing health coverage for a spouse or dependents. The group life policy nobody remembered turns up here more than anywhere else.

Tell the three credit bureaus. Equifax, Experian, TransUnion. A photocopy of the certificate with a written request to flag the file as deceased. This is the single most effective anti-fraud step on the page, because a death notice is public and new-account fraud against the recently dead is routine.

Month one

Banks and credit unions. Payable-on-death and jointly held accounts pass directly and do not wait for probate. Accounts in the person's name alone wait for the court appointment. See payable on death vs will.

Life insurance claims. Each policy, each insurer, one certified original each. Check for coverage through an employer, a union, a credit card, a mortgage, and any fraternal organization.

Pensions, annuities, IRAs, and 401(k)s. These pass by beneficiary form, not by will. Ask each administrator what the form on file actually says, because that controls the outcome regardless of the will.

Health insurance and Medicare. End coverage for the person who died, and if a spouse was covered through them, find out what happens to that coverage and on what deadline.

Motor vehicles. Title transfer through the DMV, which usually wants a certified original. Keep insurance active until the title actually moves, not until the car stops being driven.

Auto-refilling prescriptions. Call the pharmacy. Refills keep processing, and a mail-order pharmacy keeps shipping and keeps charging.

Utilities, phone, internet, streaming. Transfer to a surviving occupant or cancel. If anyone is still living in the home, transfer rather than cancel, because reconnection fees are real.

Landlord or mortgage servicer. A lease does not simply end at death, and the estate may owe rent through a notice period. A mortgage keeps accruing. Both want to hear from you early.

Subscriptions and memberships. Gym, warehouse club, professional associations, magazines, software, anything annual. These are the charges that keep hitting the card six months later.

File the will and open probate if needed. Or, if the estate qualifies, use a small estate affidavit instead. If you have been named executor, what does an executor do covers the first ninety days.

Months two through twelve

The emergency contact problem. Nothing updates these automatically. Work through doctors, dentists, specialists, employers, schools, the alarm company, and the phone contact list. Otherwise the calls keep coming, sometimes years later.

Beneficiary forms on your own accounts. If the person who died was named on your retirement account, insurance, or payable-on-death designation, those forms are now wrong. Almost nobody does this, and it is how a second estate gets tangled.

Taxes. A final individual return for the year of death, and possibly an income tax return for the estate itself. IRS Publication 559 is written for this exact situation.

Digital accounts. Email, cloud storage, social media, password managers, anything holding stored value. The platform's own setting usually outranks the will, which is why it is its own job. See digital legacy and password access and Facebook memorialized account.

Marketing mail. Register the name with the Deceased Do Not Contact list at DMAchoice.org, and opt the name out of prescreened credit and insurance offers through OptOutPrescreen.com or 1-888-567-8688, the official service run by the credit bureaus. Both are free.

Unclaimed property. Check the official unclaimed property office of every state the person lived in. Free. No finder's fee is ever necessary.

Annual renewals. Property tax, insurance premiums, safe deposit box rent, domain names, storage units. These arrive once a year and are the easiest to miss.

When the calls are from collectors

Debt collectors work from the same public death notices. What they may say is limited, and knowing the rule shortens the call.

On personal responsibility the CFPB is direct. Debt is generally paid from the estate, and

If there is no money or property left in the estate, or the estate can't pay, the debt will generally not be paid.

You are not personally liable unless you fall into a listed category: you cosigned, you were a joint account holder, you are a surviving spouse in a state whose law requires spouses to pay that type of debt, you are a surviving spouse in a community property state with a rule requiring jointly held property be used, or you are the executor and state law requires you to pay a particular bill.

On what a collector may say:

Debt collectors are not allowed to say or hint that you are responsible for paying the debts with your own money.

The FTC's policy statement adds that collectors

must avoid creating the misleading impression that the individual is personally liable or could be required to pay using his or her own assets, or assets held jointly with the deceased person.

A script that ends most of these calls: "I am not personally responsible for this debt. Send all correspondence in writing to the estate. Do not call me again." You have the right to tell a collector to stop contacting you.

Do not pay a deceased person's debt from your own money before getting advice. Once paid voluntarily it is hard to unwind, and estate debts have a statutory payment order that a well-meaning family member can accidentally jump.

The tracker

Keep one sheet. The reason is not tidiness. Six months from now somebody will ask whether the pension was notified, and a remembered phone call is not an answer.

Institution	Account or policy no.	Certificate type sent	Date sent	Contact name	Status
		Original / copy / none			Open / closed / claim filed

One row per institution, including the ones that turned out to need nothing. A row recording that an account did not exist is as useful as one recording that it closed, because it stops the next person re-checking it.

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The 72-Hour File has this tracker as a printed page, certificate column included, so the record of who was called and what was sent lives in the same folder as the documents rather than in somebody's memory. See what is inside