The First Weeks: A Financial Triage Checklist

One note before the list. If your loved one served in the military or worked for the federal government, this checklist pairs with the benefit guides in this kit: the military survivor guide and the federal civilian guide. Those cover what you will receive. This page covers what to do, in what order.

If your loved one worked in the private sector, there is no single federal benefit system to navigate, but the steps below still apply in full, and two things are almost always in the picture: Social Security survivor benefits, which you claim by phone rather than online, and any employer or private life insurance and retirement accounts, which pass to the named beneficiaries. This checklist is written to serve you just as well; work straight down it.

Phase one · The first two weeks

Protect access. Gather paperwork. Hold off on big decisions.

• Access · do this before anything else

  Keep their phone, phone number, and email accounts active

  This is the item that catches families off guard, and it is why we list it first. Banks, brokerages, insurers, and government portals increasingly protect accounts with Multi-Factor Authentication, and it usually runs through the deceased's phone or email. If you cancel that phone line, you can lose the ability to receive the codes those institutions send, locking accounts precisely when you need to reach them.

  So before canceling anything: keep the phone plan active, keep the phone charged and its passcode somewhere safe, and do not close their email. If the phone itself was lost or destroyed, contact the carrier about moving the number to a replacement device, and expect each financial institution to have its own recovery process. This one habit of preserving access can prevent months of frustration.

• Records · week one

  Order at least ten certified copies of the death certificate

  Nearly every claim, account, and agency will ask for a certified copy, and many will keep it. Order more than feels reasonable, and make sure the copies show the cause and manner of death, because several benefit claims require it. The funeral home usually handles the order; you can request more later through your state or county vital records office, but having them on hand keeps every other step on this page moving.

• Support · week one

  Identify your assigned guide, if you have one

  If the death involved a member of the military, the service assigns a Casualty Assistance Officer whose job is to walk you through arrangements and file most benefit claims with you. Lean on them; that is what they are for. If your loved one was a federal civilian employee, the employing agency's benefits office will contact you and send the claim forms. If neither applies, the executor or the estate attorney plays a similar coordinating role. Knowing who your guide is, and saving their direct contact information, helps smooth out the rest of the process.

• Notifications · weeks one to two

  Make the short list of notifications, not the long one

  Identify the institutions who need to know early: the employer or command, the life insurance companies, and Social Security. The funeral home typically reports the death to Social Security for you; confirm they did.1 The long list, every airline account, streaming service, and subscription, can genuinely wait. Working through it now costs energy you need elsewhere.

• Household · weeks one to two

  Keep the household running on autopilot

  Confirm the mortgage or rent, utilities, and insurance premiums are still being paid, especially if those bills ran from the deceased's accounts. Watch the mail: benefit letters, agency packets, and account statements will start arriving, and together they form a map of what your loved one had. A simple box or folder that everything goes into is enough of a filing system for now.

• Protection · always in effect

  Treat urgency from anyone else as a warning sign

  News of a death travels, and money follows it. Some outreach will be kind and legitimate. But anyone pressing you to move money, buy a product, pay a debt, or sign anything quickly is telling you something important about themselves. Nothing on the money side of a death requires a same-week decision from you. It is always acceptable to say: I am not deciding anything this month. Write down who called and what they wanted, and revisit it with a clear head or a trusted second reader later. The Grief and Money article in this kit covers this in depth.

• Debts · before paying anything

  Do not rush to pay the deceased's debts from your own pocket

  Debts in the deceased's sole name are generally claims against the estate, settled through a legal process with its own rules and order. Paying them personally, out of sympathy or pressure from a collector, can be a costly mistake. Before paying anything that was theirs alone, talk to the estate's attorney or executor. Joint debts and the ongoing household bills above are different; keep those current.

Phase two · The first two months

File the claims, in order of size

Once the immediate ground is stable, the claims begin. The right list depends on which system your loved one belonged to, and the guides in this kit walk through each list in detail. The short version:

If the death was military-related

Your Casualty Assistance Officer files most of this alongside you: confirming the death gratuity, the life insurance claim, the monthly Dependency and Indemnity Compensation application, the Survivor Benefit Plan annuity, and the claim for final pay and unused leave. Verify your family's DEERS records are current so TRICARE coverage continues without a gap. The full sequence, with current figures and the forms involved, is in the military survivor guide.

If your loved one was a federal civilian employee

The employing agency sends the retirement death benefit application, and separate claims go to the life insurance office, the Thrift Savings Plan, and the agency for final pay. If the death was connected to the job, the federal workers' compensation death claim is often the largest benefit of all, and while its filing window is measured in years, it is worth starting early because it takes time to process.2 Health insurance continuation has its own rules and a phone call to make. All of this is laid out in the federal civilian guide.

In every case: call Social Security

Survivor claims cannot be filed online; you apply by phone at 1-800-772-1213 or in person.3 Two things to raise on that call. First, the one-time $255 death payment, which must be claimed within two years.4 Second, if you have children at home, ask the representative to run your household's numbers two ways: once including a caregiver benefit for you and once with benefits for the children only. Because of the family maximum and the earnings limit, the answer to which way pays your household more is not obvious, and seeing both numbers is the fastest way to find out.

Gather the identity documents once

Nearly every claim asks for some combination of the marriage certificate, each child's birth certificate, and Social Security numbers. Pull them together once, scan each one, and keep the originals somewhere easy to reach. If children's benefits are involved, check that both parents are named on each birth certificate, since that is what establishes the child's claim.

Phase three · No deadline at all

The decisions that deserve to wait

Everything below is important. None of it is urgent, and most of it is better decided months from now, when the claims above have resolved and the shape of your finances is visible.

• How to receive and hold any large payment. Life insurance and lump-sum benefits can usually sit safely in an insured bank account while you decide what they are for. Parking money while weighing your options is a legitimate decision, not a failure to decide.
• The house. Deciding whether to stay, sell, or move is one of the largest and least reversible choices in front of you. It’s important to take your time and consider your options.
• Your own protection. If others now depend on you alone, your own life insurance, an updated will, and a named guardian for children move up the list. This doesn’t have to be week one. But is very high on the list.
• Your own beneficiaries. Your retirement accounts, bank accounts, and insurance likely still name the person who died. Updating them is quick once you are ready.
• Whether a trust makes sense. When a large amount arrives and children are involved, a trust lets you decide how and when they receive money rather than handing it to them outright at adulthood. That is legal work for an attorney, coordinated with how the accounts are titled.

If you take one thing from this page, take the triage itself. Two weeks of protecting access and gathering paper. Two months of filing claims with help. And a deliberate, unhurried year for everything that shapes the rest of your life.