This is Chapter 12 in the series. You can find previous chapters here:
After mom passed, I let the nurse know and asked him what I should do next. He said I’d need to choose a funeral home, and that if I didn’t have one picked out, the hospital could recommend one to me. Mom had prepaid for cremation services, which was very helpful, but I did not have their information with me because I wasn’t expecting to need it. So, I had to go home, find the paperwork, drive back to the hospital, communicate the information to the staff, and sign various forms. The staff told me that the cremation company would arrange transport of Mom’s body, and coordinate with the Texas Department of State Health Services to issue a death certificate.
With the immediate actions complete, I went home, got a few hours of sleep, then called Mom’s close family and friends to tell them the news.
To avoid having to pay any more than necessary at assisted living, we then went and moved things out of there and either donated them or put them in storage.
Because Mom passed away on Thanksgiving weekend, and December is a notoriously busy month, we decided to delay having a ceremony for Mom until after the new year, so that was one thing that didn’t have to be planned right away.
The next few weeks were a blur. My brother and I wrote up an obituary, found a lawyer to discuss probate, talked with a CPA about taxes, gathered and sorted important paperwork, made logs to track the many conversations I was having, and created spreadsheets to track the status of to-do items. In the midst of that, I finished teaching classes for the semester and held final exams, turned 50 years old, and celebrated Christmas. It was a full, if not surreal, December, to say the least.
Death Certificate
One thing I did not fully appreciate beforehand was how often a death certificate would be needed—for bank accounts, credit card accounts, insurance, annuities, and pension. While some institutions took me at my word that she had passed, others required a death certificate, and rightfully so.
And death certificates do not always arrive quickly. In our case, the timing of the holidays seemed to slow everything down even more. Mom passed away on November 30, unfortunately, the death certificate didn’t get issued until December 29. That meant that even when I knew what needed to be done, there were things I simply could not fully complete yet because I was waiting on official paperwork. Only with the death certificate could I then proceed with certain actions.
Probate, Attorneys, and a CPA
During the previous year and a half, Mom and I had gotten my name on almost all of her accounts as joint owner, or joint with right of survivorship. On top of this, I had been managing her accounts, so I had her usernames and passwords. With all of this in place, I still had immediate access to her accounts after she passed.
Because at least one of Mom’s accounts was not set up in a way that allowed immediate transfer through rights of survivorship or direct beneficiary designation, we had to go through probate in order for me to formally act on behalf of the estate. That meant attorney meetings, court filings, waiting periods, meeting with a judge (on Zoom) and eventually receiving Letters Testamentary—the document that tells banks and other institutions that I was really authorized to act as executor. I received Letters Testamentary on January 22, nearly two months after Mom passed.
That delay would’ve really mattered if I needed immediate access to money pay for bills, like a mortgage, utilities, or other items, and didn’t have those other measures (joint accounts, usernames and passwords) in place ahead of time. Also, hiring an attorney cost a few thousand dollars, which I would’ve had to pay out of pocket if I didn’t have access to Mom’s accounts.
Unfiled Tax Returns
Mom had not filed tax returns for about eight years. On the surface, this probably didn’t seem hugely concerning because she was living on a state pension and Social Security and had significant medical expenses, which meant she likely didn’t owe any taxes. But since we sold her house, we would need to file a tax return for the year…which would then likely trigger the IRS to ask about the status of the previous eight years of missing returns. And dealing with prior years meant finding records, reconstructing information, and making sure the whole thing was done correctly.
This was well beyond what I wanted to try to handle on my own, so we hired a CPA. In the end, the government actually owed her refunds for some of those years. But we would never have known that if we had not done the work of filing. And the only reason we were able to do that was because someone competent (the CPA) helped reconstruct what had been missed. Using a CPA also added a level of credibility when filing paperwork with the IRS, versus it just coming from me. Don’t get me wrong, I still had to find all the receipts and paperwork, but at least the CPA would fill in the proper tax forms and file them for me.
For your own expectation management (and this shouldn’t surprise you), dealing with the IRS is not a fast or easy process. It’s been nine months since Mom passed, and I’m still working with the CPA on those taxes. We’ve requested information from the IRS as to what has been reported to them from various agencies so we can reconstruct her tax records, and it takes them weeks to respond. The WSJ article, What I Wish I’d Known When Filing My Late Father’s Tax Return, echoes the same experience. The author of that article had been waiting 19 months for a tax refund for her late father; without that, she couldn’t settle his estate.
The Many Other Items
I won’t bore you with the many emails and phone calls I had make over the last few months, but for every account I needed to close or transfer money from, I had at least three or four interactions, be them phone calls, emails, or filling out online forms. The credit cards were the worst—it took them months to finally close out Mom’s credit cards because they outsourced the closing of accounts to an “Estate Servicing Center.”
Mom’s car was still in her name, so I had to get the title transferred over to me, which was actually a fairly straightforward process with the DMV (big surprise there!) with the right documentation (death certificate, title, letters testamentary, DMV forms). Once that was complete, I then had to sell the car, which I did to Carmax. I definitely could’ve gotten more money selling it on my own, but I didn’t have the energy or time to go through the hassle.
Again, there was no way I could’ve stayed on top of it all without spreadsheets and logs to track the interactions. I also kept a spreadsheet showing how much money was in each account, and shared the information with my brother, so he would see what I saw.
Memorial ceremony
We chose not to have a traditional funeral. Because Mom had chosen cremation and we did not have a family plot, we instead gathered family and friends at our home for a Celebration of Life. It allowed people to talk, laugh, remember her, look at pictures, move about freely, and enjoy time as a family.
My wife and my brother’s wife did a beautiful job setting out keepsakes, framed pictures, and meaningful items from Mom’s life. I was deeply grateful for what they did. The house felt warm and personal. It was also really wonderful to see family and friends that I hadn’t seen in years, and to share memories of Mom.
One of the best things we had done prior to that gathering, though we did not do it with that event specifically in mind, was sort through and digitize old family photos. Mom had kept pictures from her parents, from her own childhood, and from various stages of our family’s life. After we had gathered them from her house, I spent many nights sorting those photos into approximate year, and then mailed them off to a company for digitization. My brother did the same with pictures from his side of the family archives. Because we did all of this while Mom was still in assisted living, my brother bought Mom a digital picture frame to which we uploaded the photos so she could watch them cycle through. She told us that she would spend a lot of time looking at those photos and enjoying the memories. By the time of the Celebration of Life, we had access to an incredible visual history of the family. We were able to show pictures of Mom throughout her life on a rolling slideshow on the TV.
My one regret from that gathering is that I did not speak more intentionally. I wanted the event to feel relaxed and relational, and it did. But I also think I erred too far in that direction. I should have said a few more purposeful things about who Mom was, what I appreciated about her, and what I hoped others would remember. Not a formal eulogy, necessarily, but something more deliberate than what I offered. Afterwards, I sent a letter to family expressing my regret at not saying something more formal, and also shared my favorite memories and thanks.
Advice
Do not assume that because someone has little income, taxes are irrelevant, they may be owed a refund. If taxes have been neglected, you may want to get professional help from a CPA.
Most places would take a digital copy of the death certificate, but a couple of places required me to send in an official hard copy. I ordered 10 hard-copy death certificates, and that has been plenty.
Expect the administrative side of executing an estate to take months.
If probate may be required, talk to an attorney early.
Make sure you know where important usernames and passwords can be found.
Have rights of survivorship on accounts where possible and desired.
If you are executor:
Save copies of every document you send and notes from every call you make.
Keep a running checklist and log of accounts, subscriptions, policies, and institutions that must be contacted and your interactions with them. I regularly updated my brother with logs and spreadsheets on the status of various things. As I’ve mentioned before, we have a good relationship; had this not been the case, those logs and spreadsheets would’ve been very necessary as proof of the actions I took and the status of accounts and funds.
If you can digitize photos, letters, and family history before death, do it. Then, sit down with your loved one and have them tell you who people are in the photos. After Mom passed, there were photos of her with people who I didn’t know—it would’ve been nice to put a name to a face.
Links to each chapter:
Chapter 12 - Afterwards
Final Reflections