Legal Things to Take Care of After Your Loved One Passes Away

Posted by General Advice on September 16th, 2019

It is always incredibly difficult when someone close to you dies. Taking care of the final arrangements can be quite overwhelming. In case you are going through this and you are looking for some guidance, here is a list of important things that you need to take care of.

1.      Getting a death certificate

In case the person has died in a hospital, the doctor would provide you with a death certificate and you would not have to worry about it. In case the person has died indoors or somewhere else, you would have to call a clinic and arrange for a doctor to give you the legal pronouncement of death. After getting the certificate, you would also need to make around 10 photocopies of it in order to take care of the financial and other matters.

2.      Start with the will

In case the estate is not a large one and there is no chance of any dispute arising, then you would be able to take care of it all by yourself. In case the estate is large and disputes are likely to arise, then you should take the help of a private lawyer for assisting you with the will.

3.      Get in touch with the Social Security Office

Contacting the Social Security Office can be very helpful for you. You can apply for various benefits, meant for the late person's family members. You can easily contact social security office by going to their website.

4.      Notify mortgage companies and banks

To identify the financial accounts which your loved one handled, you can access their emails. After identifying them, take the death certificate copies to the bank to either close the account or change the ownership. If the person had a locker then you might have to get a court order for opening the safe deposit box.

5.      Notify the life insurance companies

If the deceased had any life insurance, then you would have to apply for the claim by filling out the respective forms. This would help the family of the deceased with the financial matters in the near future. Apart from claiming insurance, you would also need to cancel some specific insurance policies such as homeowner’s insurance, car insurance, health insurance, and likewise. At times, the Social Security Office takes care of this, but in case they do not, then you would yourself have to cancel all these.

6.      Determining of employment benefits

If the person passed away during their employment years, then you would have to contact the employee and discuss the situation. Apart from that, you can also get information regarding credit unions, pension plans, and union death benefit plans.

These are the few essential things that you have to take care of immediately after you are done with the funeral process. In addition to this, you would also have to close all of their social media accounts and cancel all of their government IDs to ensure that no problem arises in the future.

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