At some point in our lives we may be faced with having to deal with the death of someone close to us. Aside from dealing with the very stressful time there are number of things that need to be sorted out.
There are a few things that needed to be sorted out fairly shortly after the death.
- Notify the Doctor if they do not already know
- Register the death at a Register Office
- Look for the Will – assuming they have one
- Start making funeral arrangements – the Will may have specific requests
If there is a will
- Contact the Executor if this is not you
If there is no will
- Decide who will deal with the deceased’s affairs
- Contact the Probate Registry to apply for ‘Letters of Administration’
Who else needs to be informed?
Most likely you will have already informed close family but you may also wish to contact people who were close to the person.
In virtually all cases it will be necessary to close down accounts, possibly cancel or change car and house insurance details, subscriptions to magazines and direct debits.
Here is a list of people and organizations you may wish to contact.
Be sure to have more than one death certificate as this will help speed up the process of finalizing the deceased person’s affairs. For a typical situation a dozen or so is usually sufficient to be able to deal with everything that needs to be.
- Relatives and friends
- Employer
- Solicitor/accountant
- Tax Office
- National Insurance contributions office if they were self-employed
- Child Benefit office (at latest within eight weeks)
- Local Authority if they paid council tax
- Passport Service, to return and cancel a passport
- DVLA, to return any driving license, cancel car tax or return
- Car registration documents
- General insurance companies – contents and car insurance
- Hire purchase or loan agreements companies
- Life insurance companies
- Pension providers
- Banks and Building Society accounts
- Mortgage Company
- Credit card companies
- Landlord or Local Authority if they rented a property
- Utility companies if accounts were in the deceased’s name
- TV/internet companies
- Creditors – anyone to whom the deceased owed money
- Debtors – anyone who owed the deceased money
This is by no means an exhaustive list and they may be many other things to be sorted out.
