What to do first after a death — a Colorado checklist

Before anything else

In the first day or two, almost nothing on this list is urgent. Funeral arrangements and telling people who need to know come first. The paperwork will still be there next week, and very little of it has a deadline measured in days.

The first few days

Get a legal pronouncement and start the death certificate

If the death happened in a hospital or hospice, staff handle this. If it happened at home unexpectedly, call 911. The funeral home or cremation provider you choose will usually file the death certificate with the state on your behalf — this is the single most important document in everything that follows, and nothing else can really begin until it exists.

Order more certified copies than you think you need

Most banks, insurers, and government agencies want an original certified copy and will not give it back. People routinely order three and then spend the next two months reordering.

A practical rule of thumb

Count every bank account, investment account, insurance policy, vehicle, and piece of real property — then add five. Ten to fifteen copies is normal for an ordinary estate. Reordering later is possible but slow.

Secure the property

Lock the home and vehicles; find out who else has keys
Arrange care for pets immediately — this gets forgotten with terrible frequency
Check for perishables, and set the thermostat so pipes don't freeze if the house will sit empty
Confirm homeowner's insurance stays in force — many policies restrict coverage on a vacant home, so call the carrier and tell them
Do not let family start taking belongings yet, however well-intentioned. Until you know whether the estate is solvent and who inherits, distributing property early causes real problems.

Find the will and any estate documents

Check the home safe, a desk, a safe deposit box, the family attorney if there was one, and the county court in the county where they lived — some people file a will with the court for safekeeping in advance.

The first two weeks

Notify Social Security

The funeral home often reports the death, but confirm it rather than assume. There may be a lump-sum death payment and, for a surviving spouse or dependent children, ongoing survivor benefits. Benefits paid for the month of death frequently have to be returned, so stopping the deposits promptly avoids an unpleasant clawback later.

Notify the banks — but don't rush to empty anything

Accounts with a named beneficiary or payable-on-death designation pass directly and don't go through the estate at all. Jointly held accounts usually pass to the survivor. Accounts in the decedent's name alone are what the estate process is actually for.

Don't keep using a joint account as if nothing happened

And don't move money out of the decedent's individual accounts before you have authority to do it. Both are common, both are understandable, and both create problems that are much harder to fix afterward than to avoid.

Notify employers, insurers, and pension administrators

There may be a final paycheck, unused vacation payout, employer life insurance, or a pension survivor benefit. Employer-provided life insurance is one of the most commonly missed assets in an estate.

Notify the credit bureaus

Contact Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion and ask them to flag the file as deceased. Identity theft targeting recently deceased people is a real and active problem, and this is a ten-minute task that prevents a genuinely awful one.

Stop the bleeding on recurring charges

Subscriptions, streaming, gym memberships, storage units, and auto-renewing services keep charging indefinitely. Pull the last two or three months of bank and card statements and work down the list of anything recurring.

The first one to three months

Work out whether you need probate at all

Many Colorado estates don't. If the personal property is worth $88,000 or less (for deaths in 2026, after liens and debts) and there's no real estate to transfer, a small estate affidavit is likely enough — much faster and much cheaper. Our Colorado guide walks through the three paths.

Inventory everything

Assets, debts, and where each one actually sits. You can't make good decisions about the estate until you can see the whole thing on one page, and this is the step that surfaces the surprises.

Handle the vehicles

Colorado vehicle titles transfer at your county motor vehicle office. What you need depends on whether a transfer-on-death beneficiary was named, whether the estate is going through probate, and whether the title can actually be found.

Deal with debts carefully

Not every debt has to be paid, and not by you personally. Debts are generally paid by the estate, in a priority order set by statute, and some are extinguished entirely if the estate lacks assets.

Do not pay estate debts out of your own pocket

Collectors sometimes contact family members in ways that imply personal responsibility. Ordinarily, relatives are not personally liable for a decedent's debts. Paying out of order — or paying a debt that should have been discharged — can also make a personal representative personally liable for the shortfall. Get this one right before you write any checks.

Plan for the tax filings

A final personal income tax return is usually required for the year of death, and estates that earn income may need their own return. Colorado has no state estate tax or inheritance tax, which spares families here one complication. Talk to a CPA — this is one of the places where professional help pays for itself.

What can wait

Almost more useful than the list above. In the first weeks, these are not emergencies, whatever anyone tells you:

Clearing out the house
Selling the car or the home
Dividing personal belongings among family
Deciding what to do with the pets long-term
Any decision someone is pressuring you to make quickly

Grief makes for bad logistics decisions. Anything irreversible can generally wait sixty days, and most of it should.

What to do first