Step by step: what to do first when someone dies

Almost nothing else can begin without these. A certified copy carries a raised seal or official mark from the vital-records office; photocopies and scans are usually refused, and many institutions keep the copy you send rather than returning it.

Families routinely underestimate how many they need — one per bank, insurer, pension administrator, registry and court filing. Ordering more at the start costs a few dollars each; ordering more later stalls every open claim in the meantime.

The will names the executor, and that determines who has authority to act. Common places one turns up: a home safe or filing cabinet, the drafting attorney's office, a safe deposit box, or already lodged with the local probate court.

If no will exists, the estate is handled under your state's intestacy rules and the court appoints an administrator instead. That is a normal, well-trodden path — it changes the paperwork, not whether the estate can be settled.

This is the longest-lead item, so start it early. The court issues a document — commonly called letters testamentary for an executor named in a will, or letters of administration where there is no will — confirming you may act for the estate.

Banks and insurers will generally not release funds, and often will not even confirm whether an account exists, until they have seen it. Beginning this before you contact institutions is the single change that saves the most time.

Searching for assets is a matching problem. Records are matched on name and last known address, so the more complete your picture of where someone lived and what they were called, the more you will find and the fewer false matches you will chase.

Before searching for unknown assets, protect the known ones. Redirect the mail — it is one of the best sources of leads about accounts nobody remembered, and it stops statements piling up at an empty property.

Note which automatic payments will fail once accounts freeze, and secure any property, vehicles and their insurance. An estate that loses money while you search for more has gone backwards.

Now the searching is worth doing, because you can act on what you find. Start with the multi-state unclaimed-property search, then the states that run their own systems, then the federal sources that never appear in state databases.

Search every state the person ever lived in, not only the last one, and repeat each search under every name from step 4. New property is reported to states continuously, so a search that finds nothing today can find something next year.

Claims run on wildly different timelines and some take months. A simple record of what went where, and when, turns a confusing process into a manageable one — and gives you something concrete to point to when you follow up.

For each claim, note the institution, the date, which documents you sent, any reference number, and what they said the timeline was. When something has gone quiet for six weeks, that log is what lets you chase it properly.

Some of this is slow in ways nobody can speed up. The NAIC life insurance locator, for instance, can take ninety business days or more, and insurers respond directly to the beneficiary rather than to whoever submitted the request. That is how the system is built, not a sign anything has gone wrong.

Working through the steps in order will not make an estate settle quickly. It will stop you doing the same work twice, which is usually where the frustration actually comes from.