Do you know what you need to do immediately after your care receiver passes? Many caregivers don’t. Are you worried about missing important tasks or feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of administrative, financial, and legal responsibilities? You’re not alone.
We are Sue Ryan and Nancy Treaster. As caregivers for our loved ones with Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia, we’ve navigated the challenging process of handling death-related responsibilities firsthand. Between us, we’ve experienced the loss of multiple loved ones. We’ve learned valuable lessons about what needs to be done — and when. We’re bringing these tips recognizing your care receiver may have been a spouse, parent, child or other relative. They may or may not have been living with you.
If you are following along with our 20-Step Navigating Dementia Caregiving Roadmap, this is part of Step 20: Honor Your Grief and Navigate Death-Related Responsibilities.
When your care receiver dies, no matter how prepared you think you are, we’ve learned from experience that what you need to do next can be an overwhelming and often confusing process. It’s reasonable; this is not what we do in our day to day lives. Many people find themselves unprepared for the many financial, legal, and administrative tasks that must be handled during this already emotional time in our lives.
We’ve split our messages into what you need to do immediately, what you need to do within the first few days, what to focus on within the first few weeks and months. This is both so you don’t have to be overwhelmed by everything at one time and to make sure nothing falls through the cracks because ultimately, there is a lot to do!
In The Caregiver’s Journey podcast episode 30: Planning Ahead: 8 Essential Tips for Pre-Planning an End of Life Service, we address many of the things you can do ahead of time. If you haven’t listened to that episode, we highly encourage you to do. Completing as many things as you can ahead of time keeps them from being things you need to focus on now, at a time when you’re navigating a variety of thoughts and emotions.
We’re bringing you four tips.
Tip One: Prioritize what needs to be done immediately after someone passes away.
You need a legal pronouncement of death.
- If your loved one is under hospice care and no one from hospice is in the room when your care receiver passes away, call hospice and let them know they have passed away. Hospice will send someone and that person will create the legal pronouncement.
- If your loved one passes away at home and they’re not under hospice, call emergency services. If you’re in the US, call 911. Someone will be sent to your home and officially pronounce the death.
- If your loved one is in a care community, the care community will do the pronouncement.
- If your loved one is in the hospital, the hospital will do the pronouncement.
Whoever pronounces death will contact the correct people to pick up your loved one’s body. If your loved one was under hospice care, a care community or a hospital, that organization will call the funeral home you have already made arrangements with to pick up your loved one’s body. If they pass away at home without hospice, 911 will call the coroner and they will decide who picks up the body and when it’s released to the funeral home.
The funeral home will ultimately have your loved one’s body.
In podcast episode 30 and blog episode 30, we introduced the importance of creating a notification tree. This helps you have only a handful of people to contact immediately after your loved one passes away. The people on the tree are responsible for contacting the next layers of people, removing contacting everyone from your responsibility at this time. Now is the time when either you if you don’t have a notification tree, or the notification tree team will begin notifying:
- The immediate family and friends identified.
- Anyone you may have pre-arranged care for, including dependents and/or pets.
- Anyone else you think belongs on this top immediate notification list including, if your care receiver was still employed, their employer.
If your care receiver lives alone, at this point, you also might want to ensure their home and their belongings are secure. You may even consider changing locks and taking valuables to put someplace where they are safe.
We suggest at this point you start your list of who you’re going to eventually write thank you notes to because — trust us — there’s no way you’re going to remember them all. So much catches us by surprise. Flowers show up, someone shows up with food, offers of support come from all around — the word gets around quickly!
You may have already chosen a funeral home and made some arrangements with them ahead of time, including if this will be a military funeral, casket or cremation burial. There are some things the funeral home has to put into motion after your loved one passes away. You will need to call them and let them know you’re ready to put those things into motion.
We created an end of life worksheet that’s in the Guides section of our website, The Caregiver’s Journey. The title is: End of Life Service Worksheet. It addresses important areas you can predetermine with the funeral home. Much of the paperwork can be filled out ahead of time.
There are also some things you’ll have to do right after the time of passing. These include ordering death certificates. The funeral home will most likely suggest five to 10. Neither of us needed more than five, and we often don’t need an original anymore. It’s easy to order more if you need them.
You can’t get the death certificate immediately. It takes several days to weeks, and that’s if there’s no investigation into the death, which further delays the creation of the death certificates.
One of the things you can work on ahead of time is creating and where/how you’ll be posting the obituary.
Sue: Trust me, this is something you want to do as much of ahead of time as possible and include multiple family members in. In my first journey, I had to write the obituary while I was at the funeral home after a sudden death that had not been anticipated. I forgot key family members and felt awful about it afterward. This is even more important when you have a blended family. Have multiple people review it.
Hopefully you’re building from a baseline you and others have worked on together for the obituary. Places to post it vary based on where you live and whether or not you want to post it on social media. Most funeral homes will post obituaries on their website. Many people and news outlets now use sites like Legacy for obituaries.
Hint: Another reason to plan ahead for obituaries, is the cost can get incredibly expensive quickly. You want to do your research ahead of time!
Tip 2: What to do in the next several days and weeks following their death.
If you haven’t already, make sure you have all of their essential documents together in one place. Here are some of the ones that you’ll want to include:
- Wills
- Trust documents
- Insurance policies
- Financial accounts
- Statements from other institutions
U.S. Social Security:
- You’ll need to have the social security number of your care receiver. While the funeral home will notify Social Security, you’re going to need their social security number for other accounts.
- This is something we weren’t aware of — you may have to pay money back to Social Security. Social Security pays at the beginning of the month. If your loved one passes away during the month, Social Security will take back the pro-rated amount from the time of their death until the end of the month. Please anticipate this.
Nancy: Last year, my father died in January. My father-in-law died in October, and my husband passed away in December. We were learning on the fly fairly quickly amongst each and every one of these. We were very surprised to find out that we didn’t have to notify Social Security. The funeral home notified Social Security, but how Social Security took care of things automatically was different, and interesting to learn.
In the United States, if you are the spouse of someone who passes away, and you are also taking Social Security, Social Security will make the adjustment. For example, if you make less in Social Security than your spouse did, they will adjust you up to the appropriate amount automatically. So that happened for my mother and my mother-in-law. If you are the spouse and you’re not taking Social Security already, which I was not, you have to call Social Security and apply for the Social Security benefits. So I have done that. But that’s something that was interesting to work through and we want to make sure you have the information.
Medicare:
- Make sure you have their Medicare number. Social Security will inform Medicare.
- You’ll need the number for other identification documents.
Advisors:
We recommend making a list early on in your journey of all advisors you have. We knew we wouldn’t remember all of them if we didn’t have the list, their names, and had already completed any documentation that allowed us to act on behalf of our loved one. Notify these key advisors including:
- Attorney
- Tax advisor
- Financial planner
- Medical/life insurance agent
- Other professionals.
If your loved one was still working, you would have notified their employer immediately. Now is the time when you want to reach back out to them because there may be some benefits or other things involved where steps would need to be taken to address them now, not as part of what you needed to be doing immediately following their death.
- Notify the police know that your care receiver has passed away.
- Tell your/their neighbors.
- If you don’t already have them, you can get programmable light timers that you can put on the light so that it looks like there is someone home and then make sure any alarm systems you may have are active.
Funeral:
- If you’re going to have a funeral, make sure again that the police know when the funeral is.
- If you’ve got anyone who could be at the home during the funeral, it’s helpful to show that someone’s actually in the home. (Sadly, this is because some people track funeral announcements and use that as a chance to commit robberies.)
Contact the post office to stop or forward any of their mail.
Consider which utilities to stop and which things to continue. For example, yard service, pest control, cleaning services, trash.
Paying bills:
When someone dies, there is still the legal obligation for timely financial payments including ongoing expenses, mortgage, utilities, property insurance. The estate has the obligation for these. If you’re unsure, this is one of the things you talk about with your financial advisor.
Watch all the expenses that come in and cancel subscriptions like magazines, gym membership, streaming services, cable, phone, games, anything else. You’ll need to do this monthly for at least one year.
Grave markers:
You’ve probably identified what it is you’re going to have and what you want to do. Now you want to go ahead and activate the order. These take a while to actually be installed.
Thank you notes:
You’ve been making that detailed list of all of the people who have been helping by bringing food, flowers, any other help. Now is the time to begin writing those thank you notes. Keep in mind, you don’t need to write all of them yourself.
Nancy: In our family, when my father passed away, we were able to split up the thank you notes between my mother, my sister, and myself. It was a much less daunting task.
Sue: It’s also something where, if a family member has a special relationship with someone, it may be more appropriate for them to write the note so they can share their specific thoughts.
We’ve shared what you need to do immediately after someone passes away, what you need to do in the first days and weeks. Now we’re going to focus on what to do in the next several months. Much of this is estate oriented.
Tip 3: Managing their estate over the next few months.
Now is the time when you’ll meet with your care receiver’s accountant and tax preparer to understand any tax implications of the estate itself. If you don’t have an account or a tax preparer, you need to start researching tax implications for the estate — because there will be some.
Notify any companies you haven’t already notified in Tip 2. These include other banks, credit unions, mortgage companies, investment companies, health, auto, homeowners insurance, et cetera.
It’s important to close the estate correctly. Even if you’re married to your care receiver, you’re still going to have to close their estate out. The length of time you have varies by state. Please verify by the state you live in how long you have to do this. For example, the state of Georgia gives you one year to do that. In Florida, if there is a will, the state needs to be notified within 10 days.
It’s important for you to explore what options you have if you’re a surviving spouse or a descendant, understand the process of removing their name if you’re on those accounts with them or if they’re on the accounts with you. At this point, especially if the estate hasn’t been settled, you may not be able to remove their name from those accounts. It’s important for you to know which ones are going to require what.
If titles to items including homes, cars, and/or boats are going to be transferred, and not just sold, it’s important to understand what’s required. Now is the time to gather your knowledge so you can execute at the appropriate time.
If you have policies, including life insurance, a long-term care insurance, a pension that’s going to pay out in a claim, notify the companies now that your loved one has passed away. You have to wait until you actually get the death certificates before you can finalize the claim, and it can be weeks — sometimes months — after that until they fully process your claim.
Sue: One of the things that did surprise me when my husband passed away is that when I reached out to them, some of the companies had already been notified. I didn’t know how, and learned it was through Social Security, but the companies already knew about his passing. For example, my husband had a pension. Less than one month after his death, before I had the opportunity to notify the company that my husband had his pension with, the company sent a letter that was almost accusatory about my not having notified them. They sternly stated I was required by law to do so. Don’t be surprised — like I was — if you receive a letter before you have an opportunity to send notification declaring your loved one has died.
There also are potentially Social Security death benefits for other relatives including divorced spouses, children, and other dependents. Investigate what death benefits you might get from Social Security if you’re in one of those roles and not actually just the spouse.
Wills:
If your care receiver has a will — or even if they don’t have a will, the estate goes through probate to assign an executor officially or an administrator, (which is what gets assigned if they don’t have a will). These requirements are state specific.
In the case of the will, it’s helpful to have the input of the person who drew up the will because they will know if the will needs to go through probate or not, and some of this also varies by state.
Bank accounts may also need to be opened for payments to the estate.
- You may need to open a bank account on behalf of the estate so you can deposit checks into the estate through policies that come in by such as life insurance. This also allows you to pay bills out of the estate.
Nancy: We had different examples of needing to open bank accounts.
- My husband had long-term care insurance, which also paid out as a life insurance policy and they paid me directly as the beneficiary.
- In my father’s case, the policy was paid out to the estate and we had to open an account with the bank in the name of the estate. For this, you will also have to have a tax ID number, which is also called an Employer Identification Number (EIN). Once you get the EIN number, you can take that with you to the bank and open a bank account.
Tip 4: Focus on these things once the estate has been closed.
We need to get the care receiver’s name removed from financial accounts and we need to get all titles updated. It’s important to learn what each institution requires because they are different. Some of these are going to require an original death certificate and some also need to have proof that you are the legal executor of the estate. In the United States, the official proof that you are the appointed executor or administrator — a legal representative — is called Letters of Administration.
Something that’s important to do to prevent identity theft is notifying the credit reporting agencies. In the United States, these are Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.
The surviving family should also update their wills, their trusts.
If you’ve inherited anything, you need to talk to your financial advisor about potential tax implications. You also need to make sure your insurance is up to date if you’ve inherited, for example, a piece of property or jewelry.
Finally, you need to file the tax return of your deceased loved one.
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