Mum just died - what do we need to do?

[dandelionfluffy]

Just had word from my DB that my mum died today, it was a very sudden illness, from being at home doing her regular things, driving herself, less than 2 months ago, she was then in hospital and never went home.
I hope we can manage to sort out her affairs amicably, but of course best laid plans.
Just wondering what's next/first? I do tend to find that getting on with things helps me process them, though I'm waiting for things from my DB as well obviously.

DB is off to the hospital later to get paperwork. I gather we don't get a death certificate for several days.

I am executor as is a relative that I suspect DM thought would be able to help us but though he is sensible he is not as specialist as DM probably thought.

I know we'll need probate as she owned her own home, divorced for many years from my DF though amicably. She's left it to us (though DB and I both have 2 DCs and she may have left a proportion to them as well/instead, I know that for children/grandchildren the IHT threshold is increased), and the house is worth over the lower but not over the higher threshold (if you leave it to children).

DM had quite a few antiques and I think we have to have the contents valued? And then apply for probate once we know the value of the antiques?
I've read people just sometimes use a website like mouseprices to value the home - can we just ask a family member (e.g. my DF) to check which antiques might be valuable? Or do they expect proof?

I have no idea if she had life insurance. I know she had an occupational pension and some state pension.

DB and family are staying in DM house currently so there isn't an insurance issue I think. There's been someone there most weeks since DM went into hospital. All her paperwork is there (and it's quite organised) and DB has access to her laptop/phone.

Also fairly unusually (and I've NCd in case this is identifying though I'm a long standing MN user, cancel the cheque, naice ham) DM has left her body to medical science. I gather that sometimes they do not accept bodies, but I guess we'll have to see. This means we can have a memorial service whenever we want, I think.

I agree. I only ever got asked for a copy once for my mum and everything else accepted a scanned version.

Might the difference in needing lots of copies of the death certificate be between those who had to go to probate and those that didn't?

We are discovering ever more share certificates - mum appears to have been a bit of an amateur investor - but I can proudly report that I have got ALL the utilities transferred to my address at least (still not sure if some won't come in her name but we have the same surname anyway).

Brother is seeing funeral directors and my DC2 has an Inset day during the week we are thinking - after much to-ing and fro-ing it is likely to be a cremation now - complication is that she had relatives overseas but we hope we can tell them pretty soon when it will be.

We had to do probate for mum and dad’s estates. Dads was very complicated and over IHT threshold, but we still only ever got asked for a copy once. I had bought three copies because people said I’d need them.

You can consider a deed of variation then.

Glad that's under way and good luck it's done faster than our situation

I don't think I want to completely go with the codicil (I'll have to see the actual will first) because I think I'll be under pressure from two sides and I'd rather just go with "computer says no" and especially in case it says what I think it does, I'd be sticking up for a younger member of the family over an older and possibly slightly more pushy one.

DB and I had a quick call about the funeral, he got the death certificates and we're seeing each other for lunch on Sunday as he's on his way past us. Our relative has agreed to help planning the funeral, and also asked us how we were doing.
My main feeling at the moment is that I feel like my mum was cheated of - well, I don't know what - but it was so sudden, first she went in to hospital and they thought she'd come out when they stabilised her, then they thought they'd treat her, it's kind of "if we'd known we could have made things different". Maybe it's me that feels cheated.

So sorry for your loss
My DF passed 2 years ago, so I understand a little of what you're going through. I made lots of todo lists early on whist I could focus, then a couple of days in, when it hit at least i had something to fall back on.
Get at least 3 death certificates, 6 is better, you'll need to send some of, registered post etc.
Tell us once, doesn't tell everyone. it works great for gov departments, but doesn't tell all banks, didn't tell EE, doesn't work on all service providers. Or insurance providers.
Need to check insurance, DF insurance gave us 28 days if i remember correctly then we had to have a new policy.
Also true for the car and DVLA, as I'm sure car tax was not transferable.
Best advice i can give, is give yourself time, and make lists, write everything down. its better for something to be in a list 3 times and be ticked off rather than forgotten for 3 months.
Wishing you well

I have been taking a bit more time to think this weekend. As well as my own feelings of her being cheated I'm also catching myself thinking "oh Mum would like to know about that" or "better make sure the kids tell her about that".
It's further complicated by her not having viewed my two DCs equally. They weren't really aware but it was obvious to adults.

I'm sorry that this weekend has been hard. I find it comes the grief comes in waves, often prompted by wanting to show her/ask her something. It sounds like things happened so quickly for you/her that it must be very hard to process.

On a practical note, although I may be too late for this to be useful, but there is an equivalent service to Tell Us Once for financial institutions (high street banks/building societies) and they can use the reference number from the death certificate.
The Death Notification Service
However, I found having several certificates useful as the more 'niche' financial institutions don't use that service and mostly wanted certified copies

I did the Death Notification yesterday!
Off to the Post Office near work to redirect her post. Hope it's open as it has a habit of having odd opening hours. DB has left four DC with me and one with the undertaker.

That previous message seems like DB has left his children with me! that was the death certificates.

At what point do we start probate?

We don't yet have the will - I can't remember if I said upthread but mum's solicitor is on holiday - we left a message asking if anyone else can deal with this.

When I organised a funeral last year, waiting for the medical examiner to do their work, then the hospital staff, took over a week, then another wait for an appointment to register the death. We did not have to go to the hospital for the paperwork as they now send it electronically to the register office. It was nearly three weeks after the death before we could register. This is much slower than it used to be.
Obviously things are different when donating the body to medical science, but we had to choose a funeral director before registering the death.
You will also want to be informing family and friends.
We were advised to only get one physical copy of the death certificate as most things are online now.
The probate process cannot start until this is dealt with so I would not be worrying about that yet.

There is no time limit to start probate.
I only applied for confirmation (the Scottish version of probate) last week, 6 months after DH died.
You can start gathering information as soon as you feel able. I found it very distressing so kept putting it off.
I also really resent the whole paperwork/ official demands that seek to reduce the worth of a life to pounds and pence but that's a whole different thread.

no, we absolutely have needed hard copy death certificates for a number of things. They might initially have said online but often then insisted on a hard copy. And no, I cannot list them, as this is not my mother but DH's and he's one of 3 executors.

Sorting the funeral was.... the easy bit

DH died at home nearly 7 weeks ago. The medical examiner rang within two days and I had an appointment with the registrar two days after that.

Once I had the death certificate (I got five copies) and Tell us Once code, I prioritised. With TUO don't try online as you'll get timed out. I rang and it took 20 minutes. You can organise the funeral after registration.

Then tell banks, then utility companies and Land Registry (who should have done the transfer to me by New Year!). I got the paper form from LR as you gave to post a death certificate anyway. They each have different requirements for which documents you need to present.

You'll get a flurry of paperwork and be prepared to chase things and spend an inordinate amount of time on the telephone. DWP have been the worst so far, Natwest, Nationwide and Aviva absolutely brilliant.

Only one institution is asking for a grant of probate before releasing DH's money so that is a nuisance. I dare say I could do it myself but I have decided to use my solicitor who gave a reasonable 'quote'. It'll be much faster anyway. When I have DH's money I'll tell the institution that I won't be using them as it's been added hassle and cost for me as executor and I don't want that for my estate.

Don't do too much at once. I did banks then had a day or two doing normal things, then utilities, etc.

I don't know if there’s a leaflet outlining all this; I never saw one anyway.

I hope you get on all right.

You may not need probate, it depends on the financial providers. Some will give the money without it, but others request it, in which case you have to get it.

We need probate because she owned a house.
I wish people would read all my posts.
We've done TUO and got the death certificates.
We need one to stay with the funeral directors and one to send to her pension provider so if we need to even show one to anyone else we would have two out of our hands while those happen.

You can only put in a probate application once you have all the details of her estate, which might take a while to gather. I'm a few weeks ahead of you, and have had a letter from HMRC (who were notified via Tell Us Once) that they need to work out if mum owed or is due a refund of tax (it will probably be the latter) and they'll try to write back within eight weeks if it's either, although it could take longer if institutions are slow in updating them.

Annoyingly, they say if everything is all square they won't bother writing to tell me, which means that after eight weeks I wonlt know whether it's ok or if I need to chase.

I'm also waiting on NS&I to find out how many premium bonds she had, and they also say it'll take around eight weeks to get back.

And I've not yet had the bill from the funeral director (the funeral took place a couple of weeks ago)

I think we'll end up using my relative's solicitor friend to apply for probate. I guess we just keep sending her stuff after we find it, till we think we haven't found any more?

We didn’t apply for probate for about five months after mum died. We just contacted all her banks/utilities providers/investments. And got her house valued. Once we’d gathered everything it was incredibly easy to apply for probate ourselves. I’d previously use a solicitor to do probate on my dad’s estate as he had a small holding and we needed to pay IHT. But I kick myself a bit after doing mum’s, as it was so simple. Took about half an hour online and was granted in a week.

Unless the estate is very complicated (e.g. multiple properties, trusts etc) or there is Inheritance tax to pay I wouldn't rush into using a solicitor to do probate - it'll slow things down considerably and you'll still have to do all the donkey work of identifying all the assets.

I'm on my third stint as an executor now and agree with @RockinCara that I've found the process of applying for probate to be pretty straightforward - and there is a very helpful board over on the Money Saving Expert forum where you can ask questions if you have any queries.

I'm a bit surprised that the funeral director not only needs to see but to keep a death certificate ? With my mum, when I registered the death the registrar gave me a 'green form' to pass on the the funeral director to show that it was ok for the funeral to go ahead and for her to be cremated, but they didn't ask for a death certificate at all.

Maybe my brother got it wrong then.
Anyway if you read my posts 🙄 you will see there ARE multiple properties and it WILL attract IHT.

Apologies. Only trying to help and share our experiences!