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The Household Book

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What to do when someone dies. Seven pages, in the order things need doing. Today is at the front, and today holds about six things.

The page appears right here, and arrives by email at the same moment.

Nothing else follows for a fortnight. Reply with the word stop and nothing follows at all.

Today, before you download anything

If you have just been told, this is the whole of today. It is short because today is short, and because almost everything that feels urgent tonight is not.

  • Nobody needs an answer from you tonight. Anyone who says otherwise can wait until morning.

  • Tell the two or three people who should hear it from a person rather than a rumor.

  • If the death was at home, the doctor or the coroner comes first, before anybody else is called.

  • Ask the funeral home to hold off on decisions about the service. They will say yes.

  • Find the wallet, the phone and the keys, and put all three in one place you will remember.

  • Eat something. Drink some water. Sleep if it will come.

Everything after today is in the pages above. Tomorrow is mostly facts the funeral home will ask you for, and they are easier to find than to remember.

A page of The First Week: what to do today, in the order it needs doing.

What is in the seven pages

In the order it needs doing, not the order it feels.

  1. TodayWho must be told, and who can wait. The three calls that cannot wait, with the numbers.
  2. TomorrowWhere the documents are, and which ones the funeral home, the bank and the county will ask for.
  3. This weekMoney that must keep moving: the mortgage, the utilities, the payroll if there is one.
  4. This weekInsurance and benefits to claim, in the order they pay out.
  5. Within a monthAccounts to close, subscriptions to stop, and the letter to send to each.
  6. Within a monthThe house, the car and the pets: what keeps running and who is doing it.
  7. WheneverThe letters, and everything that nobody has to do at all.

Things people get wrong in the first week

Cancelling accounts too early. A bank account that is closed before the direct debits are moved takes the mortgage down with it. The pages put the money that must keep moving before the money that can stop.

Ordering too few death certificates. Almost every institution wants its own copy, and ordering more later costs time you will not want to spend. Ten is not too many.

Doing it alone. There is a page in the middle for writing down who is doing what. Most of this can be shared and almost nobody shares it.

Making decisions about the service on the first day. Nothing about a funeral has to be settled tonight, whatever the first phone call implies.

This is not legal or financial advice

It is a list of what usually has to happen and roughly when, written for the United States. Probate, taxes and anything to do with a will are matters for a lawyer licensed in your state, and the pages say so wherever they touch one.

Who sends this

The First Week is the front of The Household Book, which is a book people fill in for their own household so that nobody has to work any of this out from scratch. These seven pages are given away on their own because the week they are for is not a week for buying anything.

There is nothing else to do here. If it helps, keep it. If somebody you know needs it in a year, it will still be at this address.