When a parent dies there are perhaps six things that genuinely need doing in the first week, and several dozen that feel urgent and are not. The difference matters, because you are being asked to do administration at the exact moment you are least able to.
This is the order that works. Get certified copies of the death certificate, because almost nothing else can start without them. Find the will. Tell the small number of organizations that actually need telling now. Secure the property. Then stop, because the rest can genuinely wait, and most of it will take months anyway.
Nothing here is legal advice. Probate and creditor rules are set by state and sometimes by county, and the funeral director and the probate clerk where your parent lived will tell you what applies.
The first 48 hours
Straight away
Get the death pronounced. In a hospital, hospice or nursing facility, staff handle it. At home with hospice involved, call the hospice line rather than 911. At home unexpectedly, call 911.
Same day
Choose a funeral home. In most states they file the death certificate with the county or state vital records office on your behalf, which is why this step gates the next one.
When you order
Ask the funeral home for certified copies of the death certificate. Ten is normal. Each institution wants its own and most will not take a photocopy.
Check first
Ask whether a prepaid funeral plan or burial policy already exists before arranging anything. Many people have one and never mention it.
Within thirty days
Secure the property. Lock it, forward the mail, and check the homeowners policy, because most insurers restrict cover once a house has been vacant for thirty or sixty days.
Why you need so many death certificates
Banks, brokerages, insurers, pension administrators, the Social Security Administration, the DMV and the county recorder will each want a certified copy, and most will not accept a scan or a photocopy. Some return them and some keep them.
Ordering ten through the funeral home at the outset is far cheaper and faster than ordering them one at a time from vital records over the following six months. This is the single most common thing people wish they had known.
Who to tell in the first two weeks
Not everybody. Just the ones where delay causes a real problem.
7 things to do
Ticks are for this visit only. Nothing here is saved anywhere.
Where to look for the will
Start with the obvious places, because that is usually where it is: a home safe, a filing box, a bedside drawer. Then the less obvious. Many people leave the original with the attorney who drafted it, and some counties allow a will to be deposited with the probate court during life.
If you find one, read who is named as executor before doing anything else. That person petitions the probate court for the authority to act, and if it is not you, several of the steps above become theirs rather than yours.
What can genuinely wait
Probate runs for months in most states, and there is no version of this where you finish it in two weeks. Closing accounts, valuing the estate, filing the final tax return and distributing anything are all downstream of steps you have not yet completed.
Clearing the house can wait too, and most people who rush it regret it. Nothing bad happens if a closet stays full until spring.
The part nobody warns you about
The hardest thing about these two weeks is rarely any single task. It is that you are reconstructing somebody's entire administrative life from the outside, without a map, while grieving. Which bank. Which 401(k). Whether there was life insurance. Whether the utilities were in their name. Who the attorney was.
Most families find some of it and never find the rest. Money sits unclaimed with state treasurers, subscriptions keep taking payments for years, and somebody spends a Sunday going through paper looking for a policy number that may not exist.
It is worth saying plainly, because it is the thing you will think about later: this is not something you can fix now, for the person who has died. It is something you can fix for the next person, which is usually you.