<prompt> Human: First--I am not a lawyer or a financial planner. I am a 31-year-old high school teacher who had the misfortune of having to deal with the loss of my husband last year after a long illness though it happened suddenly, without time to prepare. So here is what I have learned from the experience of losing a family member suddenly--here is what you need to do in the immediate aftermath and the time following. Note that this does NOT include anything having to do with the care and keeping of children under the age of 18 for whom the deceased may have been the primary caregiver, as I dont have any experience in dealing with that. 1. Immediately after your loved one dies If you are in a hospital, you will be asked immediately what funeral home you want your loved ones remains sent to. I chose one based on my late husbands best friends recommendation. Hopefully you will know of one ahead of time. If not, the hospital will likely be able to give you a list, and you can call and inquire about pricing. Delegate this task if possible. If you know what your family members wishes are in terms of organ and tissue donation, talk to the hospital staff about whether that is feasible. In our case, I wanted my husbands remains to be used for medical research into his genetic condition, but this was not a possibility due to the infection symptoms he was exhibiting at time of death. The hospital will have a chaplain. Use them. I hate the hospital where my husband died more than words can describe, but all three chaplains we saw during the last day he was alive were wonderful. Chances are that there will probably not be an autopsy. If there is, it will be performed by the county medical examiner, and after cause of death is determined, then the remains will be released to the funeral home youve chosen. It is also possible though expensive, and not usually necessary to have a private autopsy done. These would usually take place at the funeral home. 2. Funeral home stuff Questions to consider:Did your loved one have a preference between burial and cremation? Did your loved one make any pre-arrangements? Do they already have a burial plot? Will you be having a funeral or memorial service? If so, do you want to hold it in a church or at the funeral home? There are no right answers to these questions. If you know what your loved one would want you to do, then do that. If you dont know, then do what feels right to you. The funeral home will also ask you how many copies of the death certificate you would like. The short form death certificate will not have the cause of death on it, but the long form will. Get several of each. You need the long form certificate for filing life insurance claims. Most places will want the short form. The funeral home wont tell you this, but you dont have to buy things like urns and whatnot from them. I chose to, because the prospect of receiving a plastic baggie with my husbands ashes that I would have to deal with was horrifying. A friend bought an urn for his fathers ashes on Amazon. There are options that are cheaper than the funeral home, but I chose to pay the obscene markup so that I wouldnt have to deal with the logistics. Take someone with you to the funeral home. Dont try to do it yourself. The funeral home, many times, will take payment from the life insurance proceeds. I didnt go this route so cant speak about it. Make funeral arrangements, write obituary, etc. Ask for help. Dont try to do it all yourself. Edit: If your loved one was in the military, even if they have been separated for a long period of time, they may be eligible for military funeral honors. The funeral director will ask about whether they were in the military and share this information with you.If your loved one was a member of a fraternal organization Masons, Shriners, etc., you or a family member may want to contact the organizations leadership to share the news of their passing. My husband was a Mason and it meant a lot that representatives came to his memorial service. 3. Dealing with assets First--determine the following. Where did the deceased have bank accounts? Did the deceased have life insurance? Was the deceased employed at time of death? Do they own a home or a vehicle? Do they have a retirement account? You need to know the answers to all of these questions, and Im assuming that you do in my next steps. Next--does the deceased have a will? If so, then the next step is locating it, finding an estate attorney, and getting the estate filed. From there, all assets will be distributed through the estate, with the exception of the ones below. Life insurance does NOT pass through the estate process--it goes to the beneficiary listed on the policy, or if there is no beneficiary listed, it goes to the next of kin as determined by state law. Tip: ALWAYS LIST A BENEFICIARY. If the life insurance policy is through the deceaseds employer, then the person in charge of benefits at their employer will be able to help you file the necessary paperwork. You will need a certified copy of the death certificate to file the life insurance claim. Any other joint property also does NOT pass through the estate. This tends to apply more if the loved one who has died is a spouse, rather than a parent. Bank accounts may have a payable-on-death beneficiary, in which case they do not pass through the estate, they go directly to that beneficiary. In some cases, an estate will have no assets, because all of the assets will pass directly to the spouse. This is what happened in my case--all of his assets went to me. Tip: Ensure that any bank accounts, retirement accounts, etc., have a payable-on-death beneficiary. If the deceased owned any real property, you will need to have the death certificate recorded in the county where the property is owned. If the property is jointly owned, this will remove the deceaseds name from the property. I believe that if the property is solely owned by the deceased, this puts it in the name of the estate. Notify Social Security. There is a small survivors benefit like 250 that the surviving spouse receives if he or she was living with the deceased at the time of death. If the deceased was receiving Social Security benefits at time of death, and you receive a check after the person dies, you have to return that check to Social Security, but it will be reissued to the next of kin. You will have to call your local Social Security office to report the death, and they will be able to help you with what benefits, if any, you are entitled to. Notify the plan administrators for any retirement accounts the deceased had. If you are the only next of kin, then their retirement accounts can be rolled over into an account for you. 403b or 401k accounts are rolled into traditional IRAs. Edited to add: Personal property, if there is a will, needs to be disposed of according to the will. However, if your family member didnt have a will, or if there is personal property not mentioned in the will, it is going to be up to you, the next of kin, to dispose of it as you see fit. Dont be a dick. If you know your spouse would have wanted his parents to have had something, give it to them. Dont get rid of stuff just to do it in order to hurt someone. Similarly, dont let other people take stuff before youre ready to deal with it. If siblings or parents or whoever are pressuring you to give them X item because Dad said I could have it when he died and you arent sure if thats true, just say can we deal with this at a later time or similar. This is really more of a rrelationships issue. That being said, this part CAN get extremely complex if it turns out that a particular piece of personal property ends up being wildly valuable and you had no idea. This happened to my grandmother and her sister when my great-grandmother died--a painting my great-grandparents had bought for 200 in the 1940s wound up being worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, which they didnt find out until AFTER the estate was closed and my great-aunt had wound up with the painting. This will not happen to the vast majority of people. Finally, if you intend to file any type of wrongful death or medical malpractice lawsuit, then you must open an estate. Only the estate of a deceased person has standing to file a medical malpractice suit, and any settlement that is received as a result of a lawsuit becomes an asset that is a part of the estate and would be distributed according to the will or to the next of kin if there is no will. 4. Dealing with debts, estates, etc. IMPORTANT EDIT: The below information does NOT apply in community property states Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin. I know very little about what does happen in community property states, other than that the spouse of the deceased CAN be held responsible for marital debt even if the debt was solely in the name of the deceased. Thanks to udiscontentedwinter for pointing this out--I have no experience with this. First--it is important to know that no matter what debt collectors try to tell you, YOU ARE NOT PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DEBT INCURRED BY THE DECEASED. This includes medical bills! You have enough expenses to worry about. Do not try to pay these bills. However, bills you SHOULD plan to pay are anything that is in both your name and the deceaseds name jointly such as mortgages and car loans. Edit: Also, even if the mortgage and car loan are only in the name of the deceased, if you want to keep these items, you should make arrangements to pay them. Again, talk to your estate attorney. All unsecured debts become part of the deceaseds estate. If there are assets that do not pass automatically to the next-of-kin, those also become part of the deceaseds estate. Any debts must be paid out of the assets in the estate. If there are no assets, then no debts can be paid and they will be discharged. When you go see your estate attorney, he or she will ask you for a list of any creditors that the deceased owed money to. Once the estate is filed, your attorney will send notices to each creditor and give them the opportunity to file claims against the estate. These claims take precedence over the distributions to the beneficiaries of the estate. However, each creditor has a limited amount of time after theyve been notified to file a claim. If they dont file a claim in a timely manner, then they lose their opportunity to do so. Edit: Federal student loans are forgiven when the borrower dies, as are PLUS loans where the student for whom the money was borrowed has died. However, documentation must be provided to the student loan servicer. In our case, his loans were in forbearance while he was out of work due to his illness, and somehow not sure how the servicer got word of his death, and sent me a letter saying that they could be forgiven if I sent them the death certificate. 5. All those other accounts Joint bank accounts--contact each bank. Inform them that one of the account holders has died. They will require a copy of the death certificate usually a photocopy is okay. This will remove the deceased from the joint account. If the account is only in the name of the deceased, it should become part of the estate. Cell phones, land lines, cable, internet, etc--decide whether you are canceling or changing the name on the account. Sometimes you will need to cancel the account in order to change the name on it. Credit cards--this one is advice from personal experience. If you are an authorized user on a credit card account where the primary cardmember is deceased, you should remove yourself as an authorized user BEFORE canceling the account. Otherwise you may find your social security number flagged as deceased. Way to go, Citi. Make sure that any expenses that are automatically billed to those accounts are changed. Then cancel the accounts, sending a copy of the death certificate if necessary. The credit card companies will notify the credit bureaus so that no new credit accounts can be opened in their name. Frequent flyer mileshotel points--you may be able to transfer the points or miles belonging to a deceased person to the next of kin. This will depend on the individual programs. Expect to have to provide a copy of the death certificate. E-mail--I left my late husbands e-mail account open. I knew the password so that wasnt an issue. I would rather have access to it than to close the account. I also dont want to lose all of what he had stored across the Google ecosystem. You may feel differently. Facebook, other social media--Facebook has a memorial account feature. If you choose to memorialize your loved ones Facebook profile, you will be able to manage what if anything is posted on their page, and no one will be able to log in to the account. Digital media Kindle books, purchased music, etc.--every issuer is different. For Amazon content, your best bet is to add your loved one to your Amazon household so that the content can be shared. I dont know about purchased music from other services but I understand that they can be difficult. If anyone has experience with getting other digital services purchased music through iTunes or Google or similar, Steam, etc. please feel free to share. Medical insurance--the death of a family member is a qualifying event to change your insurance plan. If the deceased was the primary person on the insurance plan, then you will need a new insurance plan. You will be able to sign up for insurance through your employer even if you are outside of your normal open enrollment period. If you dont have access to insurance through your employer, you will be eligible for insurance through COBRA for up to three years. If the deceased was on your insurance plan, then you can remove himher to save on the premiums even if its outside of open enrollment. 6. Taxes You will need to file a tax return on behalf of the deceased when it comes to tax time next year. If you were married to himher, then you can file a joint tax return for that tax year. Its much the same as filing taxes for anyone else. If the estate is open for more than a year, you will need to file tax returns for the estate as well not the same year that the person died, this is after that. Talk to your estate attorney for more details on that. 7. Things you would never expect As soon as you file the estate andor record the death certificates, you will start getting letters, and if youre very unlucky, phone calls and text messages, from realtors and investors. They will be offering to buy your house for cash quickly, help you liquidate the estate, etc. These people are the scum of the earth and deserve to be publicly shamed. If you are a better person than I am, you will ignore them. If you are like me, you will post pictures of these letters on the internet so your friends and loved ones know not to ever work with these people. You will be amazed at what service providers will need copies of the death certificate. I had to provide a copy to cancel our internet service because it was in my husbands name. I had no problem at all canceling his credit cards. YMMV. I hope this is helpful to some of you. Sources: My personal experiences over the last 10 months since my husband died  <response>: Sorry about your husband. Thanks for this amazing list. Lots of stuff my mom couldve used when my dad died. 