What to do after someone you love dies
Practical, compassionate guides for families navigating the first days and weeks after a death. Each guide covers what most families need to know — without the legal jargon.
What to Do When Someone Dies: Where to Start
The first calls, the paperwork nobody warns you about, and what can safely wait a few days.
What to Do When a Spouse Dies: First Steps
Funeral arrangements, survivor benefits, joint accounts, and estate paperwork — in order of priority.
What to Do When a Parent Dies: A Practical Guide
From the first few days through executor responsibilities and distributing the estate.
Executor Checklist: What to Do After Someone Dies
A step-by-step checklist for executors — legal authority, estate inventory, taxes, and distribution.
Do You Need Probate? A Simple Guide
What probate is, when it's required, and when you may be able to skip it.
Sourced answers to the narrower questions that come up once the first week is behind you. Each one shows where the information came from and when we last checked it.
Notice to Creditors: How Estate Debt Claims Work
Why estates publish a notice to creditors, what starts the claim clock, and how long creditors have to file in each state.
Small Estate Affidavit: What It Is and Who Can Use One
What a small estate affidavit does, when a state allows one instead of probate, and the current limit and waiting period in each state.
Most states let a small estate skip full probate, and almost none of them call it the same thing. Each page gives that state’s own name for the process, the current limit, what it covers, and a link to the statute we read it from.
A state is listed only where we have confirmed its rule on the state’s own page. Where we have not, we would rather send you to the court clerk than show you a number.
- Alaska
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- California
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- District of Columbia
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- New York
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- South Dakota
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
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What to do in the first 30 days.
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