Practical Issues When a Loved One Passes Away

 

Part III of a 3-part series The September 2009 and October 2009 issues of Insight for Caregivers included a guide for working with a funeral home and planning a funeral or memorial service. Along with those major issues, there are other practical tasks large and small which should be attended to in the days and weeks following the death of a loved one.

Notifying Others That Your Loved One Has Died

When a loved one passes on, some names will come to you immediately as persons who should be contacted. You will probably want to contact close family, good friends; the person's minister, priest, rabbi or other spiritual leader, their lawyer and their physician. Some calls you will want to make yourself. Other calls have to be made, but you do not need to make them. When a death occurs, friends and family members will want to help. It makes sense to let others help in passing the word. With friends, for example, or a faith or community group, often you can make only one call and ask that person to organize informing others from that circle of acquaintances.

Legal Tasks

• Contact the person's lawyer regarding the content of his or her will (if one exists) and any other legal business which needs to be attended to.
  
  
• You (or whomever has been appointed under the person’s will as personal representative of the estate) should contact the person’s bank, financial planner, pension administrator, life insurance company, and any others with whom the person had significant financial dealing to inform them of the death.
  
  
• Many of these representatives will want certified copies of the death certificate if benefits are to be paid or transferred to a surviving spouse or joint tenant.

Around the Home

• If necessary, cancel club memberships and magazine subscriptions, and have mail delivery stopped or transferred.
  
  
• Outstanding bills need to be collected and paid, but this should always be coordinated with other aspects of handling the estate.
  
  
• For many families, one of the difficult things to do is to go through your loved one's personal possessions—clothing, papers, mementos, furniture—in order to sort it, sell or give away what the family does not want to keep, and make arrangements for the rest. Like visiting the funeral home, this is a task that is easier if shared among two or more family members.

Taking care of all the business that needs to be sorted out after a death can take weeks or even months, depending on how the person's affairs were organized. It can be tiring and emotionally draining work. If you can, share the responsibilities with other family members, do hard tasks with another person, and don't take on too much at one time. It is normal to feel overwhelmed at times with the finishing up of things.

Hospice staff know that the days after a loved one passes away can be overwhelming for survivors. We hope the information in this three-part series was helpful.