In the days after someone dies you are asked to become an administrator at exactly the moment you are least able to be one. Everything arrives at once, everything sounds urgent, and almost none of it comes with an explanation of what order to do it in.
Most of it is not urgent. This is a list of what genuinely has a deadline, what follows on from it, and what can wait until you can think again.
The process differs between England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The main differences are flagged as they arise. Always check the current detail on GOV.UK, mygov.scot or nidirect, because fees and forms change.
The first day or two
Get the death formally certified
Nothing else can start until this happens, and how it happens depends on where the person died.
In hospital or a care home, the staff handle it. A doctor completes the medical certificate of cause of death and the paperwork moves on without you doing anything.
At home, expectedly, ring the GP surgery, or 111 out of hours. Do not ring 999 if the death was expected and there is nothing to be done.
Unexpectedly, or in an accident, ring 999.
In England and Wales, every death is now reviewed either by a medical examiner or by a coroner before it can be registered. The medical examiner's office will usually contact you, and they will ask whether you have any concerns about the care the person received. This is a genuine question and it is worth answering honestly. It does not delay the funeral in ordinary cases.
If a death is referred to a coroner, registration waits for them. This is normal and does not imply anything is wrong. In the meantime the coroner can issue an interim certificate, which is enough for most banks and for probate to begin.
Tell the people who need to hear it from you
Before the practical machinery starts. It will still be there in an hour.
Check for a funeral plan or wishes
Look for a prepaid funeral plan, a note of wishes, or instructions in a will, before you commit to a funeral director. Prepaid plans are common and families routinely discover them after paying for a second funeral. Check the paperwork and, if you can get to it, the will.
Make sure the property and any animals are safe
If the person lived alone: pets fed and rehomed temporarily, heating left on low in winter, perishables cleared, doors locked, and the property properly secured. Tell their insurer if it will stand empty, because most home insurance policies restrict cover on unoccupied properties after around 30 days and an unreported empty house can invalidate a claim.
Within five days (eight in Scotland)
Register the death
This is the only hard legal deadline in the first fortnight. Five days in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Eight in Scotland. The clock can be paused if a coroner is involved.
In England and Wales you register in the district where the death occurred, by appointment, which you book through the local council website. In Scotland you may register at any registrar.
Who can register: a relative, someone present at the death, the occupier of the premises where it happened, or the person arranging the funeral.
Take, if you have them: the person's full name and any previous names, date and place of birth, last address, occupation, details of a surviving spouse or civil partner, whether they were receiving a state pension or benefits, and their NHS number. Do not delay the appointment because something on that list is missing. The registrar will work with what you have.
Order more certified copies of the death certificate than you think you need. Between five and ten. Banks, pension providers, insurers and share registrars each want to see an original or a certified copy, several will keep it, and buying more later costs more per copy and wastes weeks posting one document round the country. This is the single most useful piece of practical advice on this page.
You will also be given the certificate for burial or cremation, still widely called the green form in England and Wales, which the funeral director needs before the funeral can go ahead.
Use Tell Us Once
The registrar will offer this, and you should take it. One process notifies HM Revenue and Customs, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Passport Office, the DVLA, the local council and several other departments at the same time. It is available across most of Great Britain, though not everywhere, and it saves a genuinely large amount of repetitive work. If it is not offered where you are, you will need to write to each separately.
The first week
Arrange the funeral
Two things worth knowing before you sit down with a funeral director.
First, prices vary substantially between firms in the same town for a near-identical service, and funeral directors in the UK are required to display a standardised price list. Ask for it. You are allowed to compare, and comparing is not disrespectful.
Second, if you or the person who died were receiving certain benefits, you may be able to claim a Funeral Expenses Payment, or Funeral Support Payment in Scotland. Check before you pay rather than after. There are also Bereavement Support Payments for surviving spouses and civil partners under state pension age, which are not means-tested and are not automatic. You must claim, and there are time limits.
Tell the banks
Most UK banks and building societies participate in a shared Death Notification Service, which lets you notify several institutions through one online form. Accounts in the person's sole name are frozen. Direct debits stop, which is worth knowing in advance because it can catch out a joint household bill.
Funeral costs are an exception: banks will normally release money directly from the deceased's account to pay the funeral director's invoice, even before probate. Ask, rather than paying from your own account and hoping to be reimbursed later.
Employer and pensions
Tell any employer, and any workplace or private pension providers. Death-in-service benefits and pension lump sums can be substantial and are often not paid unless someone asks. This is one to do properly rather than quickly.
The second week
None of this has a deadline. Do it as you can.
- Utilities, broadband, mobile, TV licence, council tax. A sole-occupancy property may be exempt from council tax for a period after a death, but only if you tell the council.
- Insurance. Home, car, travel, life. Life policies may pay out, and again, only if claimed.
- Subscriptions. The small recurring ones that keep taking money and are surprisingly upsetting to see months later.
- Redirect or stop the post. Royal Mail offers a specific bereavement redirection service, and there is a free service that stops most direct marketing mail to a deceased person, which spares the family a steady drip of letters addressed to someone who has died.
- Begin probate, if there is property or substantial assets. A grant of probate, or letters of administration where there is no will, or confirmation in Scotland. Small estates often do not need it at all: many banks release balances below a threshold on a simpler declaration. Ask each institution what their threshold is before assuming you need a solicitor.
- Social media and online accounts. Most platforms have a bereavement process to memorialise or close an account. There is no rush on this and many families leave it a long time, which is fine.
What can wait, and probably should
Clearing the house. Choosing a headstone, which in most cemeteries cannot be installed for six to twelve months anyway while the ground settles. Deciding what to do with ashes. Any decision that is irreversible and not urgent.
There is a strong pull, in the first fortnight, towards doing something, because doing something is easier than sitting still. It is worth resisting it on the decisions that cannot be undone. The paperwork has deadlines. The remembering does not.
One thing worth doing early, and it is not a purchase
Gather the material while the people who hold it are still around you.
In the first fortnight the house fills with relatives and old friends, many of whom you will not see again for years. They are carrying photographs you have never seen and stories nobody in the immediate family knows. Ask them now, while they are in the room. Ask for one specific memory each rather than "share a memory", which paralyses people.
Check old phones and handsets before anything is wiped or thrown out, because saved voicemails are the single most valuable thing families lose in the clear-out, and once gone there is no recovering a voice.
You do not have to do anything with any of it yet. Put it in a box or a folder and leave it. But it will not still be gatherable in a year, and almost everything else on this page will.
Where to get help
Cruse Bereavement Support and, in Scotland, Cruse Scotland offer free bereavement support. Citizens Advice can help with benefits, probate and debts. The Samaritans are available at any hour on 116 123 if the practical is not the problem.
And if part of what is ahead of you is putting together something that says who they were, rather than only when they lived, that part has no deadline at all. It can be done in a year, or in five. We have written about what to put in a memorial page for whenever you get there, and our memorial plaque with memory page will still be here, at £79.99, whenever that is.