Mail, utilities and subscriptions

Mail first, and it is harder than it looks

Mail is the highest-value item here and the one with a real rule behind it. It is also how you find the accounts nobody knew about — the insurer, the pension, the storage unit, the credit card with a balance.

A death certificate is not enough to redirect someone's mail. USPS requires documented proof that you are the appointed executor or administrator, presented in person at a Post Office. Mail redirection therefore waits on probate, which almost nobody anticipates.^{Source 1}

What you may do without any authority at all

If you shared an address with the person, the position is completely different and much better. USPS states that you may open and manage their mail as needed. You may also forward a single piece by hand — cross out your address, print "Forward to" and the new address on the envelope, and leave it for the carrier or put it in a collection box.^{Source 1}

So the practical split is: someone at the address can act immediately, and someone at a different address needs the court document first. If nobody lives there, arranging for a neighbor or the buyer of the house to collect and pass on the mail is worth doing on day one, because the alternative is months of it accumulating in a box.

The advertising mail

Marketing mail addressed to someone who has died is a specific and recurring distress, and it is the one thing with a direct remedy. Registering the name on the Deceased Do Not Contact list should reduce it within about three months. It is separate from any postal forwarding or hold, and it is worth doing early precisely because it takes that long to work.^{Source 2}

The two cancellations that cause the most damage

Almost everything here can be canceled whenever you get to it. Two things cannot, and both are usually canceled early because they are obvious monthly costs.

• The mobile number. It receives the two-factor codes for the bank, the brokerage, the insurer and the email account. Cancel the line and you lock yourself out of accounts you still have to close — and the number is recycled, so it cannot be recovered later.
• The email account. It is the master key: password resets for almost everything run through it, and providers do not reopen a closed account. Canceling the email closes the route every other account uses to prove who you are, so do it last.

Keep both running until every financial account is closed and every benefit claim is settled. Paying a phone bill for six months is cheap next to reconstructing access to an investment account. Put a reminder on it rather than trusting anyone to remember.^{Source 3}

The same logic applies more weakly to a home internet connection where the household is being wound down remotely, and to any password manager subscription — letting that lapse can destroy the credentials it holds.

The order that actually works

1. Protect the property first: keep the heating, water and electricity on at a house that still contains belongings, and tell the insurer it is unoccupied.
2. Stop the bleeding: cancel discretionary subscriptions and memberships, which are pure loss and easy wins.
3. Find what exists: use twelve months of card and bank statements as the inventory. It is the only complete list of recurring charges anyone has.
4. Transfer what continues: put the household services into the name of whoever is now responsible, rather than canceling and reconnecting.
5. Cancel what ends, once the account work is finished: the phone and the email last.
6. Claim the refunds: prepaid services, annual subscriptions and utility deposits are frequently refundable pro rata, and almost never offered.

Do this from the statements rather than from memory. Every family discovers a charge in month four that nobody recognized, and the statement is where it was visible all along.

Who pays for all this in the meantime

Continuing services are an expense of administering the estate, and they are ordinarily paid from estate funds rather than out of a family member's pocket. Keep receipts for anything you pay personally — an executor is generally entitled to reimbursement, and the record is what makes that straightforward rather than contentious.

Where an account is in the deceased person's sole name and the balance is unpaid, that is a claim against the estate, not a debt of the family. Where a household member is a joint account holder on the service, it is theirs and it continues.

Do not let a provider talk a relative into assuming an old balance as a condition of continuing service. Ask whether the balance is being treated as an estate claim, and put the new service in the new person's name rather than taking over the old account.