when-someone-dies

When Someone Dies Skill

Grief and logistics arrive together, and the logistics are designed for someone at their sharpest handed to someone at their worst. The merciful truth this skill is built on: almost nothing is as urgent as it feels. A handful of things genuinely need doing in the first days; most can wait weeks; some should wait (major financial decisions have no place in the first month). This skill triages the chaos into today / this week / can-wait, provides the call scripts, and repeats the one logistical rule everyone learns too late: order more death certificates than seems reasonable.

What This Skill Produces

• The triaged timeline — today, this week, this month, can-wait-and-should — with the feels-urgent-but-isn't items explicitly parked
• The notification order — who must be told, by whom, in what sequence, with scripts for the hardest ones
• The document engine — death certificates (how many, from where), and the papers every later step will demand
• The protection list — the immediate steps that prevent problems (securing the home, mail, subscriptions-becoming-fraud-vectors) without touching anything that belongs to the estate process

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• The relationship and the role — next of kin? named executor? helpful sibling? The task list differs sharply by role, and doing another role's tasks creates real problems
• The situation basics — where it happened (home/hospital/hospice changes the first hours), whether arrangements exist (pre-plan, known wishes, nothing), and the country/region — death administration is deeply jurisdiction-specific; this skill sequences the universal shape and flags every local step as verify-locally
• The household reality — dependents, pets, an empty home, urgent bills that genuinely can't wait

Framework: The Triage Rules

1. Today is smaller than it feels: the legal pronouncement and transport (the institution largely drives this), care of dependents and pets, securing the home if now empty, and telling the innermost circle. That's the list. Everything else pitching itself as today is grief wearing a clipboard.
2. This week: the funeral home / arrangements conversation (bring someone; decisions made alone in grief get upsold — the [funeral-cost conversation] deserves its own sitting), employer notification, starting the death-certificate order (10–15 certified copies — banks, insurers, registrars, and utilities each want their own; ordering twice takes weeks), locating the will and any pre-arrangements, and beginning the notification cascade with scripts.
3. The notification cascade has an order: family → employer → the estate's professionals (attorney/executor) → government agencies and pension/benefits providers → financial institutions → the long tail (subscriptions, socials, mail forwarding). Each call answered by "I'll need a certified copy" — which is why the certificates come first.
4. The should-wait list is protective, not lazy: selling the house, large distributions, paying most non-secured claims, moving in/out — parked for at least a month, both because grief prices badly and because paying the wrong things in the wrong order can create personal liability where none existed (that's the estate process's job — see estate-settlement-organizer).
5. The reader is not okay, and the artifact knows it: every list is short, sequenced, and delegation-ready ("hand this section to your brother") — the format is the kindness. And one line appears verbatim: you do not have to do all of this, and you do not have to do it alone.

Output Format

The Next Two Weeks: [name, relationship] — [role]

Today (and only this)

[The 3–5 items · dependents/pets/home lines · who's told first]

This Week

[Arrangements (bring someone) · certificates: order [N] certified copies from [vital records / registrar — verify locally] · will located · employer told · the cascade begun]

The Calls

[Scripts: the hardest family call · the employer call · the institution template: "I'm calling to report the death of [name] on [date]; what does your process require and where do I send the certified copy?"]

This Month / Can Wait / Should Wait

[The parked list, each with why parking it is safe or protective]

Death administration varies by country and region — registration deadlines, who may order certificates, and estate steps are all local; verify each flagged step with the registrar, the institution, or an attorney. You do not have to do all of this, and you do not have to do it alone.

Quality Checks

• Today's list has ≤5 items and no financial decisions
• The certificate order (with a number) appears in week one
• Every institution call routes through the same certified-copy script
• The should-wait list explains its protective logic
• Every jurisdiction-specific step carries the verify-locally flag
• The you-are-not-alone line appears verbatim

Anti-Patterns

• Do not produce the 90-item master checklist on day one — triage IS the product; the wall of tasks is what this skill replaces
• Do not let feels-urgent into today — probate, accounts, and the house are week-three-or-later conversations
• Do not advise paying estate debts or distributing anything — that's the estate process, with its own skill and its own professionals
• Do not state legal deadlines as universal — flag and route locally
• Do not write in checklist-cheerful tone — plain, warm, and short; the reader is grieving