Request copies of the death certificate. Notify all insurance companies, and find out about benefits due to beneficiaries. Notify the Social Security Administration. Change property titles to be in your name.
Upon your death, unsecured debts such as credit card debt, personal loans and medical debt are typically discharged or covered by the estate. They don't pass to surviving family members. Federal student loans and most Parent PLUS loans are also discharged upon the borrower's death.
If the account holder established someone as a beneficiary, the bank releases the funds to the named person once it learns of the account holder's death. After that, the financial institution typically closes the account. If the owner of the account didn't name a beneficiary, the process can be more complicated.
You are not responsible for someone else's debt. When someone dies with an unpaid debt, if the debt needs to be paid, it should be paid from any money or property they left behind according to state law. This is often called their estate.
Step 1: Take Care of Immediate Things
In addition to managing your grief, you will have to handle certain affairs immediately. Notifying family members, loved ones and family advisers will likely be one of the first things you must do. Decisions about organ donation and funeral arrangements will be the hardest.
Beyond taking care of funeral arrangements and contacting loved ones, the first thing you should do when your spouse dies is to locate any estate planning documents. These might include their most recent last will and testament, any trust documents, records of payable-upon-death accounts, insurance policies, etc.
A 2014 study published in the Journal of Public Health found that people whose spouses had just died had a 66% increased chance of dying within the first three months following their spouse's death. 2 Prior studies had placed the increased chances of death for the surviving spouse even higher, at up to 90%.
DOCUMENTS YOU MAY NEED: Death Certificates (5-6 certified copies), Social Security Card, Marriage Certificate, Birth Certificate, Birth Certificate for each child, Insurance Policies, Deeds and Titles to Property, Stock Certificates, Discharge Papers for a Veteran and/or V.A.
You cannot manually remove someone from a joint bank account. You will have to inform the bank of your spouse's death.
Conventional wisdom says wait at least a year before you make any big changes to your living situation, but the reality is waiting a year may not be financially possible. If you are able to slow down and let the dust settle a bit, that is no small blessing.
Until the intensity of your grief subsides, you can't expect to be truly happy again. Work through your guilt, extreme pain, extreme sadness, intense anger, and every other feeling and emotion. Often, reaching out to a grief counselor gives you a structure for doing this work.
A widow (female) or widower (male) is a person whose spouse has died and has usually not remarried.
The equivalent name for a woman whose husband dies is a widow. In many cases, a man is only referred to as a widower if he has not remarried. Both a widow and a widower are described as being widowed.
It is best to think of the decedent's belongings, paperwork, and assets as “frozen in time” on the date of death. No assets or belongings should be removed from their residence. Their vehicle(s) should not be driven. Nothing should be moved great distances, modified, or taken away.
Rehl: I talk about the three stages of widowhood: grief, growth, grace. At first, she's so vulnerable that if she's making irrevocable decisions immediately, they may not be in her best interest.
While it could vary depending on the credit card issuer, if something happened to your husband you would probably no longer have access to his accounts. Here's how it works: As an authorized user on your husband's account, you're allowed to use the card, but he's the owner of the account.
You are generally not responsible for your spouse's credit card debt unless you are a co-signer for the card or it is a joint account. However, state laws vary and divorce or the death of your spouse could also impact your liability for this debt.
You generally don't inherit debts belonging to someone else the way you might inherit property or other assets from them. So even if a debt collector attempts to request payment from you, there'd be no legal obligation to pay. The catch is that any debts left outstanding would be deducted from the estate's assets.