What to do when someone dies

If the death was expected and happened at home or in a care home, contact the GP or the out-of-hours service. If it happened in hospital, the hospital bereavement office handles the paperwork and will contact you. If the death was sudden, unexpected or unexplained, call 999 — the police attend as a matter of routine and it does not mean anything is suspected.

A doctor issues the medical certificate of cause of death, which is what allows registration to proceed. Where a death is sudden, violent, unexplained, occurred in custody, or the doctor cannot certify a cause, it is referred to the coroner in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, or to the procurator fiscal in Scotland. That referral is common and not an accusation, but it delays registration — sometimes by weeks if a post-mortem or inquest is needed.

Where there is a delay, ask the coroner's office for an interim certificate of the fact of death. Most banks, pension providers and insurers will accept it to begin their processes, which stops the delay stalling everything.

Find out whether the person left a will and, separately, whether they left funeral wishes. Wishes about burial, cremation or organ donation frequently sit in the will, which is often not read until after the funeral. Check for it early. If you cannot find one, ask their solicitor, bank or the probate service's will search.

Contact a funeral director if you are using one, or the council if you are arranging a direct cremation or need help. You are not obliged to use a funeral director at all, and prices vary substantially between firms for identical services — funeral directors are required to display standardised price lists, which makes comparison possible.

Do not rush to cancel anything else. Nothing outside the funeral needs deciding in the first two days, and decisions made under pressure about property, possessions or the deceased's home are the ones people regret.

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland you must register within five days of the death. In Scotland the limit is eight days. The clock is paused where a coroner or procurator fiscal is involved.

In England and Wales, register at the register office for the district where the death occurred — registering elsewhere is possible by declaration but adds time. In Scotland you can register with any registrar anywhere in the country, which is genuinely more flexible. In Northern Ireland you register with the district registrar, and it does not have to be the district where the death happened. Most offices require an appointment, so book as soon as the medical certificate is available.

Who can register: usually a relative, someone present at the death, the occupier or an official of the building where the death occurred, or the person arranging the funeral. Take the medical certificate, and if you have them, the deceased's birth certificate, marriage or civil partnership certificate, NHS number, passport and proof of address. Missing documents do not stop registration but slow it down.

You will be asked for the full name including any previous names, date and place of birth, last address, occupation, and the full name, date of birth and occupation of a surviving spouse or civil partner. Getting a detail wrong is fixable but the correction process is tedious, so check spellings before you sign.

Registration itself is free. Certified copies of the death certificate cost a fee each, and this is the decision worth thinking about. Every organisation holding an asset — each bank, each pension scheme, each insurer, the Land Registry, the probate service — will want to see one, and many will not return it promptly. Ordering several at registration is cheaper than ordering them individually later. For an estate with a house, a few accounts and a pension, most people need considerably more than they first expect.

The registrar gives you a certificate for burial or cremation, known as the green form in England and Wales, which the funeral director needs, and — where relevant — a certificate to allow benefits to be dealt with. In Scotland you receive Form 14 for the funeral director.

Tell Us Once is a service that reports a death to most central and local government at the same time. The registrar gives you a unique reference number and you either use it there, online afterwards, or by phone. It covers the DWP, HMRC, the DVLA, the Passport Office, the local council for council tax, Blue Badge and housing benefit, and Veterans UK. It operates in England, Wales and Scotland. Northern Ireland has a separate arrangement, so check what the registrar there offers.

It has a time window, and it is short. Use it at the register office if you can. If the window passes you must contact each department individually, which is entirely possible but takes hours rather than minutes.

Tell Us Once does not cover the private sector at all. You still have to notify banks and building societies, mortgage lenders, workplace and private pension schemes, insurers, utility and telecoms providers, the landlord or housing association, subscription services, and any employer. Many banks and building societies operate a shared bereavement notification service that reports to several institutions at once — ask, because it is not always offered.

Notify credit reference agencies to reduce the risk of identity fraud on the deceased's details, which is a genuine and underestimated problem in the months after a death. Registering with the bereavement suppression service run by the direct marketing industry stops most unsolicited post.

For social media and online accounts, each platform has its own memorialisation or closure process, and most require a copy of the death certificate. There is no single route.

Keep a simple written log: who you notified, when, what reference they gave and what they asked for. You will be asked the same questions repeatedly by organisations that have no record of each other, and the log is what stops the process becoming circular.

Funeral costs are the immediate financial problem, because the money is usually needed before the estate is accessible. Prices vary widely between funeral directors in the same town for materially the same service, and the largest single variables are the type of service — a direct cremation with no attended ceremony costs a fraction of a traditional funeral — and the coffin, which carries a substantial mark-up.

Check first whether the deceased had a prepaid funeral plan, a life policy, a death-in-service benefit through an employer, or a trade union or professional association death benefit. Any of these can cover most or all of the cost and they are frequently forgotten.

Most banks and building societies will release money from the deceased's account to pay a funeral director's invoice before probate is granted, usually on production of the death certificate and the invoice. They will not usually release it to you personally. Ask directly — this is standard practice but rarely volunteered.

If you are on a qualifying means-tested benefit and are responsible for the funeral, the Funeral Expenses Payment in England, Wales and Northern Ireland can cover burial or cremation fees, some travel and a contribution towards other costs. It is a claim with a deadline running from the date of the funeral, and it is recovered from the estate if there is money in it. Scotland runs its own Funeral Support Payment through Social Security Scotland, with its own rules and a longer claim window.

If nobody can pay and there is no estate, the local council or the hospital has a duty to arrange a public health funeral. It is a simple cremation or burial without a ceremony as standard, though families can usually attend and sometimes contribute to add elements. Councils also run bereavement services and can be contacted directly.

Do not sign a funeral contract in your own name unless you are content to be personally liable. Whoever signs the contract is liable for the bill regardless of whether the estate later turns out to be insolvent — a detail that catches out family members who arrange a funeral for someone whose debts exceed their assets.

Stop any benefits the deceased was receiving — Tell Us Once handles this for most — and be aware that benefits paid after the date of death are recoverable, so overpayments will be reclaimed from the estate.

A surviving spouse or civil partner under State Pension age may be able to claim Bereavement Support Payment, which pays an initial lump sum and monthly instalments for a limited period. It is not means-tested and is not affected by earnings, but the amount you receive depends on when you claim — claiming late reduces the total. It is available to cohabiting partners with children in certain circumstances following changes to the rules.

Check State Pension and workplace pension entitlements. A surviving spouse may inherit part of the deceased's additional State Pension or protected payment, and workplace pension schemes commonly pay a survivor's pension plus a lump sum. The lump sum is normally paid at the trustees' discretion under the deceased's nomination form, which means it usually passes outside the estate and outside probate.

Tax does not stop at death. HMRC needs to finalise the deceased's income tax position to the date of death, and any income the estate generates afterwards — interest, rent, dividends — is taxable as estate income and may need reporting. Tell Us Once notifies HMRC of the death but does not settle the tax.

Inheritance Tax is a separate question from probate and is often due before probate is granted, which is a well-known ordering problem in the system. Most estates pay none, but where it is due there are instalment options for property and a direct payment scheme letting banks pay HMRC from the deceased's accounts.

Do not distribute anything from the estate early. Executors and administrators are personally liable for debts and tax that emerge later, and money paid out to beneficiaries in the first weeks is very hard to recover. Debts have to be settled before beneficiaries are paid, in a statutory order of priority.

Almost everything can wait. There is no deadline for clearing a house, no deadline for deciding what to do with possessions, and no requirement to apply for probate quickly. The pressure to act fast usually comes from other people rather than from any legal obligation.

Do not clear or sell the deceased's belongings before the estate is valued. The value of the estate at the date of death is what matters for Inheritance Tax and for the probate application, and disposing of items first makes an accurate valuation impossible. It can also cause disputes between beneficiaries that are avoidable with a photographic inventory.

Secure the property. Tell the insurer that the house is unoccupied — most home insurance policies restrict or void cover on a property left empty beyond a set period, and an uninsured empty house is a serious exposure for the executor personally. Redirect post, keep the heating on low in winter, and make sure someone checks it.

Where the deceased rented, notify the landlord or housing association promptly. A tenancy does not simply end on death: some tenancies pass to a successor with the right to succeed, others end after a notice period, and rent continues to accrue against the estate until the tenancy is properly terminated.

The next stage is dealing with the estate itself — establishing what there is, whether probate is needed, and distributing it. Not every estate needs probate: small estates held by a single bank are often released on production of the death certificate and an indemnity, and property held as joint tenants passes automatically to the survivor without any grant.

If the estate is complicated, contested, insolvent, or includes a business or foreign property, take advice before acting rather than after. Executors carry personal liability, and the cost of an hour with a solicitor at the start is small against the cost of unpicking a mistake.