Grief Admin

Grief Admin Skill

Grief arrives with a second job: dozens of phone calls, forms, and account closures, each requiring you to say "they've died" again to a stranger — and it lands exactly when you have the least capacity to do any of it. Most guides make this worse by dumping an overwhelming master checklist. This one triages: what truly can't wait (days), what should happen soon (weeks), and the large majority that can genuinely wait months — because almost nothing on the list is as urgent as the internet implies, and permission to do it slowly is part of the help. It handles the humane logistics and points clearly at the parts that need a professional.

What This Skill Produces

• A triaged task list: 🔴 urgent (days) · 🟡 soon (weeks) · 🟢 whenever (months, and that's fine) — so you're not carrying the whole thing at once
• Notification scripts: the short, kind phone/email lines for banks, employers, utilities, subscriptions, so you don't have to compose "they died" thirty times
• A who-to-tell-and-close list built for this person's actual life (accounts, services, memberships, the digital ones people forget)
• A do-it-in-pieces sequence: the order that reduces stress, with the explicit standing permission to pause, delegate, and leave the 🟢 pile for later
• Clear hand-offs to the professional bits (probate/estate, tax, benefits) without pretending to be them

Required Inputs

Ask for (if not already provided):

• The relationship to the person and the rough shape of their life (worked? rented/ owned? married/partnered? dependents? online life?)
• What's already been handled (death certificate, funeral) and what's looming
• The user's own state and support — are they doing this alone, exhausted, able to delegate any of it?
• Country/region, so the professional-process pointers (registration, probate, benefits) route correctly — flagged for local verification, not asserted

Framework

1. Triage hard — most of it can wait. The relief is in the sorting. 🔴 Truly urgent: register the death where required, secure the home/pets/dependents, anything time-boxed by law or safety. 🟡 Soon: employer, main bank, landlord/ mortgage, benefits that must be stopped or claimed. 🟢 Whenever: subscriptions, memberships, social accounts, sentimental admin — months, no rush, and saying so is the point.
2. Script the "they died" call once. The repeated disclosure is a specific cruelty. Provide the short, calm template ("I'm calling to report a death and close/settle an account — the person is [name], date of death [date]") plus what they'll typically ask for (death certificate copies, account details), so each call is a form to fill, not a fresh wound.
3. Build the list from THIS life. Generic checklists miss the person's actual footprint. Reconstruct it: income sources, the direct debits, the phone/energy/ water, the digital accounts (email is the master key — see [[digital-death-plan]]), the memberships, the pet, the plants. Order-of-notification matters (some accounts need others closed first); the sequence handles it.
4. Permission to go slow and delegate. The most useful sentence in the whole skill: almost nothing here is as urgent as it feels, and the 🟢 pile can wait until you can face it. Name what can be delegated (a friend can make cancellation calls with a letter of authority), what can be paused, and that leaving things undone for a while is normal, not negligent.
5. Hand off the professional parts cleanly. Probate/estate administration, tax, and benefits are real processes with real rules that vary by place — the skill names them, flags "get proper advice / use the official service," and does NOT improvise law. It gets you organized enough to make those conversations short.

Output Format

## First, breathe — here's what actually can't wait
🔴 Urgent (days): [short, with why]

## Soon (weeks)
🟡 [employer, main bank, landlord/mortgage, benefits to stop/claim…]

## Whenever you can (months — genuinely fine to wait)
🟢 [subscriptions, memberships, social accounts, the sentimental admin]

## The "reporting a death" script (use for every call)
[The calm template + what they'll ask you for]

## Get proper help for these (not DIY)
[Probate/estate · tax · benefits — with "use the official service / a solicitor",
verify-local]

## Permission
[What you can delegate · what you can pause · you're not behind]

Quality Checks

• The list is triaged into days/weeks/months, and the 🟢 pile is genuinely large — the reassurance that most of it can wait is real, not token
• The reporting-a-death script exists so the user composes it once, not thirty times
• The task list reflects this person's actual life, including digital accounts
• Legal/tax/benefits/probate are handed to professionals and the official process, flagged verify-local, never improvised
• Explicit permission to go slow and delegate is present and prominent

Anti-Patterns

• Do not dump an undifferentiated master checklist — the triage IS the help; an unsorted list adds to the overwhelm
• Do not give legal, tax, or probate advice — name the process, route to the official service or a solicitor, verify-local
• Do not manufacture urgency — most tasks aren't time-critical, and pretending they are is cruel; say what can wait
• Do not rush the person or imply they're behind — grief has no admin deadline for the 🟢 pile
• Do not forget the person's dignity in the logistics — this is a life being closed down, and the tone holds that even while listing tasks

Related

[[estate-settlement-organizer]] for the formal estate side; [[digital-death-plan]] for the online accounts (and to make your own easier for others); [[legacy-letter]] for the human, non-admin part; [[caregiver-burnout-check]] if the death followed a long illness.