What to Do Financially After a Loved One Passes (Checklist Updated for 2025)

First of all, if you are reading this because your spouse or loved one has recently passed, our firm would like to express condolences to you and your family. We recognize that losing a loved one can be the most difficult experience we go through during our lifetimes.

However, we also recognize this is a critical period where many important and sometimes irrevocable decisions are made regarding your family’s finances.

Dealing with these decisions during a period of heightened stress and grief can be extremely difficult. Our hope is that this article can help to alleviate some of this stress by laying out clear steps you can take to keep your finances in good order after a death in the family.

Main Takeaways

• Certain items should be addressed immediately after a death to ensure that you can properly say goodbye to your loved one and continue with your day-to-day financial needs.
• Other items can wait until a later date but should be addressed to appropriately update and transfer the wealth your loved one accumulated.
• Updating your own financial plan is also important to protect your family in the event that something happens to you in the short-term.

Immediate Actions (Within 1–2 Weeks)

Step 1: Engage with a Trusted Source

Dealing with this process entirely on your own can be a lot to ask of any human being. It can be extremely helpful to ask a trusted child, relative, or friend to help you talk through your decisions as they come up. This will help you get perspective and a second opinion may help you attend to items you may not think of yourself.

Step 2: Alert a Trusted Advisor

It’s likely that you’ll have to speak with the following individuals to get everything updated:

• Accountant
• Attorney
• Bankers
• Insurance Agents
• Financial Advisor

Hopefully, your financial advisor is already familiar with all the other players that assisted your loved one with their finances. It can be a good idea to call the financial advisor and ask them to alert all the other professionals of your loved one’s passing. This allows everybody to begin preparing any necessary paperwork in the background while you deal with the funeral and family matters.

Step 3: Obtain Death Certificates

Many of the institutions you will deal with (including the funeral director) will need a copy or original of the death certificate to get things updated. I would suggest getting more copies and originals of the death certificate (perhaps even 10–15) so that you have what you need on hand when one is requested.

Step 4: Have Access to Funds for the Funeral/Cemetery Expenses

Real Client Story: I worked with a wealthy couple that had more than enough money to handle any funeral and cemetery expenses that would arise in the event of one of their deaths. However, in an effort to balance out their estate plan, they decided to put all of the liquid assets in the husband’s trust and all of their real estate in the wife’s trust.

When the husband suddenly passed, the wife wanted to purchase two beautiful plots at the local cemetery but she needed to move quickly because another couple was interested in the same plots. Unfortunately, because all the liquid assets were in her husband’s name, there was a time delay in her ability to access the funds she needed for the funeral and cemetery expenses.

People wrongly assume that if they are married they will be able to access their spouse’s accounts quickly no matter how things are titled. The moral of the story is this: Make sure you have a gameplan for accessing funds in the event of an unforeseen death.

Pro Tip: You may want to consider prepaying funeral and cemetery expenses so that you do not have to worry about how you would handle an unexpected death.

Step 5: Deal with Ongoing Benefits and Costs

Certain institutions may have been providing your loved one with ongoing benefits and you may be in a position to inherit those ongoing benefits. You’ll want to alert these institutions so that there is no disruption in these benefits. These items may include:

• Social Security
• Medicare
• Institutions Providing a Monthly Pension

You’ll also want to address any bills or other costs your loved one was handling regularly so that you do not fall behind or get hit with penalties for not updating things.

Short-Term Actions (Within 1–2 Months)

Step 1: Have a “Professionals Meeting”

Hopefully, your financial advisor alerted all of the appropriate professionals, and they have prepared the items that need to be addressed to settle your loved one’s estate. At this point, it is a good idea to schedule a single meeting where all of your professionals can get together with you and discuss who is going to tackle what, assemble a checklist of what needs to be accomplished, and determine a timeline of when it is going to be accomplished.

Step 2: Find an Invaluable Resource to Reference

Even after the immediate concerns are handled, you’ll be surprised at how many other items need to be addressed. Some of these may include:

• Protecting against identity theft of the deceased
• Organizing your loved one’s documents
• Retitling accounts, opening new trust accounts, and transferring assets
• Filing for life insurance benefits

Book Recommendation: It can be hard to piece together these items without a formal system. Thankfully, there are experts that have focused on topics like this to help the many individuals that go through this process each year. One book I would highly recommend is called Details After Death by Mark Colgan, CFP. This is a great resource for those that lose loved ones. It includes a step-by-step process of the short and long-term items you’ll want to address after the death of a loved one. Having a book on hand allows you to both go at your own pace and ensure you cover all the appropriate ground.

Long-Term Actions (After Two Months)

Step 1: File the Final Tax Return

It is important that your attorney, advisor, and accountant coordinate to ensure that a final tax return is filed for your loved one’s estate. This needs to be done on time and everything needs to be appropriately accounted for. Again, impress upon your professionals that they need to be in close communication to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

Step 2: Update Your Estate Plan

Especially in the case of the spouse, it is likely that you had them listed as a beneficiary of your estate in the event that something happens to you. When you have finished settling your loved one’s estate, make sure you review your own accounts and trust documents to make sure that your plan is properly updated if something happens to you.

Financial Checklist of What to Do When a Loved One Dies

In short, each of the time segments above can be broken down into these simple explanations:

Immediate Actions

• Identify people you can trust to help you talk through your decisions
• Obtain the documents and funds to handle funeral and cemetery expenses
• Contact the institutions that will help maintain your day-to-day living situation

Short-Term Actions

• Meet with the professionals that will guide you through the settling of the estate
• Find a resource that will help you track and address every decision that needs to be covered

Long-Term Actions

• File a final return with the government and update your personal estate plan

McCabe & Associates Can Help Preserve Your Family’s Legacy

In working with widowed individuals over four decades, we’ve come to recognize that this process moves at a different pace for every individual. Moreover, people who lose their spouse no longer have their most trusted confidant next to them to help them make these important decisions.

Similar to family and friends, our generational wealth advisors have tried to give widowed individuals perspective on the choices they need to make and streamline communication across their professionals to relieve some of the overwhelming stress that accompanies this process.

We stand ready to help you and your family if you need guidance after the loss of a loved one.