The extreme sadness or grief that occurs after a loved one’s death often lasts for over one year. But, if you’re the one in charge of handling after-death care, you don’t have the freedom to give up all your responsibilities to grieve.
Instead, the planning process begins as soon as your loved one takes their last breath. So not only are you dealing with the loss of someone you love, but you also have to handle the stress of settling their affairs.
To make the process easier, here is a death checklist to help you manage all of the legalities and steps to take after a loved one dies.
Get a Pronouncement of Death
Wondering what to do when someone dies? The very first thing you’ll need to take care of is getting a proper pronouncement of death.
If your loved one was in the hospital during their death, their doctor will take care of this for you. The same is true if your loved one was in a nursing home or under hospice care. These facilities will handle the official pronouncement for you.
But, if your loved one dies at home, you’ll need to call 911 for an official pronouncement. Emergency officials will then transport your loved one’s body away from the home.
Contact Close Friends, Family Members
As soon as your loved one passes away, you need to start thinking about who to notify when someone dies.
Start by writing a list out of everyone close to your loved one. At the top of your list should be the person’s next of kin and close family members. Then, include close friends, co-workers, church members, or anyone else who played a major part in their life.
To make the process easier on you, contact a few people and ask them to notify a certain number of people on your list. Make sure to follow up with them to ensure that everyone was properly notified and that no one will be surprised later.
Find All Their End-of-Life Documents
The next thing on your list of what to do after someone dies is to find all their end-of-life documents.
Here are the most important ones you should look for:
- Will or trust
- Any final instructions or requests made by the deceased
- Life insurance plans
- All bank account information
- Deeds and titles to assets
It’s very important that you find these things as soon as possible. Read this article to learn more about why timeliness is important in the legal sense after someone’s death.
Plan Funeral, Burial Arrangements
One of the most important things to do when someone dies is to plan their funeral and burial arrangements.
If your loved one’s death was expected, they most likely have a little bit of this planned for you in their final instructions. Make sure to look over their wishes so you know exactly what they wanted. If they pre-planned or pre-payed for their arrangements, this step is pretty much already taken care of.
If no plans were made, you’ll need to contact a funeral home. They will help you come up with a plan for the viewing, funeral, and burial. This can be the most stressful part of the process, so it might be wise to take someone else with you to the planning appointment.
Write Their Obituary
Once you’ve notified the deceased’s close friends and family and planned out funeral arrangements, it’s time to write an obituary. Obituaries run in your local newspapers to inform everyone about the death and of the service information.
Some newspapers will give you a template to fill out to help you write the obituary. If that’s the case, all you need to do is fill in the requested information. If there is no template available or you want a more personal obituary, make sure you include these important details:
- Name, date of birth, and date of death
- Locations where the person lived and worked
- Surviving and deceased family members
- Any hobbies or organizations the person was involved with
- Date and location of funeral and burial service
- Any donation request in lieu of flowers
Make sure that once you have the obituary written, you submit it to your local newspapers and the newspapers in any other towns the deceased lived. You want to ensure that as many people as possible are notified of the death before the funeral service occurs.
Take Time to Grieve
The final thing on your list of what needs to be done when someone dies is to take time to grieve the death.
Up to this point, you’ve been busy making arrangements and taking care of everything. Most likely, your grief was put on the back-burner while you took care of necessities. But, your mental health is just as important as anything else on this death checklist.
Consider visiting a grief counselor or therapist to talk about the loss.
Follow This Death Checklist to Simplify the Process
Losing a loved one is hard, but hopefully, this death checklist can help simplify the process.
Start by receiving an official death proclamation and notifying close friends and family members. Then, it’s time to find all end-of-life documents, plan the funeral, and write out the obituary. Once the funeral is done, you can finally take time to grieve your loss.
Once you take care of a loved one’s death arrangements, you know how important it is to simplify the process for your family while you’re still alive. If you want to help your family avoid probate after your death, read this article about creating a transfer on death deed.
