What to do when a parent dies: the first fortnight (UK)

When a parent dies in the UK, two things cannot wait: get the medical certificate of cause of death, then register the death within 5 days in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, or 8 days in Scotland. Ask for several certified copies while you're there. Almost everything else, including probate and clearing the house, can wait weeks.

This is written for a death anywhere in the UK, though Scotland and Northern Ireland differ from England and Wales in places marked below. It isn't legal advice, and it can't see your family's exact situation, so where it disagrees with your registrar or a solicitor, go with them. If your parent died in the United States, use the US version instead.

An example: what the first week can look like

Say your father dies in a hospital in Leeds on a Sunday morning. (This is an example, not a case.) Ward staff arrange the medical certificate of cause of death, and you collect it on Monday. You book an appointment at the register office for Wednesday, four days after he died, comfortably inside the 5 day limit.

At the register office you register the death, buy five certified copies (the bank, the pension provider, the mortgage lender, the car insurer, and one spare), and the registrar gives you a Tell Us Once reference number. That evening you use it online, and one form tells HMRC, the DWP, the passport office, the DVLA and the council together. The bank and the pension still need their own call. That's the whole week.

The first week

1. Straight away

   Get the medical certificate of cause of death. Hospital or care home staff arrange it. If the death was at home and unexpected, call 999.

2. Within 5 days (8 in Scotland)

   Register the death at a register office. A relative who was present or lives nearby usually does this; the registrar can confirm who qualifies.

3. At the register office

   Buy certified copies of the certificate, more than feels necessary, and get the Tell Us Once reference number if the registrar can't set it up with you there.

4. Within 28 days of that

   Use Tell Us Once online or by phone, if you're in England, Scotland or Wales. Northern Ireland doesn't have it, so contact each department yourself.

5. Once it's registered

   Contact a funeral director, or check whether a plan was already paid for. Many people have one and never mention it.

What Tell Us Once covers, and what it doesn't

One notification, used within 28 days of getting the reference number, reaches most of government. It reaches none of the rest.

Who to tell yourself, in the first two weeks

Tell Us Once handles government. This is the rest, roughly in the order it helps to do them.

Find the will, and read one clause first

Look where people actually keep them: a home safe, a filing box, a bedside drawer, or with the solicitor who drew it up. Where to look for a will covers the wider search, including what to do if several turn up or none does.

When you find it, read who's named as executor before you read who inherits. That person has the legal authority to act, called confirmation in Scotland and probate in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and a son or daughter arranging the funeral doesn't automatically have it.

What can wait a while

Probate or confirmation takes months almost everywhere, and there's no version of this where you finish it inside a fortnight. Closing accounts, valuing the estate and paying anything out are all downstream of steps you haven't reached yet.

Clearing the house can wait too. It's fine if a wardrobe stays full until spring, and rushing it risks throwing away papers you still need.

Scotland and Northern Ireland: what's different

In Scotland you have 8 days to register instead of 5, and you can use any register office in the country rather than a local one. If the death is referred to the procurator fiscal, Scotland's version of a coroner, the registration clock can pause until that's resolved, and the registrar can talk you through an interim step if the funeral can't wait. Once you have the right to act, it's called confirmation rather than probate, and for a smaller estate, £36,000 or under, the local sheriff court can help you apply directly on form C1, without a solicitor.

Northern Ireland keeps the 5 day registration deadline but doesn't use Tell Us Once at all, so each government department has to be told separately. NI Direct's bereavement service can point you to the right forms for each one.

Questions people ask

For your own affairs, later

Reconstructing which bank, which pension and where a will was kept is often what convinces people to organise their own paperwork before it's needed. Personal Life Affairs Companion is the Draftpace product for that. It isn't built around UK law specifically, but its dates print in the UK date format and its printed book can be sized to A4 as well as US Letter. It asks one question at a time: who to contact first, where the will is kept, which bank, which pension, who has a spare key. It records where things are, not the documents themselves, never asks for an account number or a password, and prints a book someone could follow. It has no notify list, and it sends nothing to anyone. See the Companion.