Along with losing our partners, we now have to deal with all of the admin of not only the funeral etc, but dealing with banks etc. I though it might be useful to start a thread on tips/advice to help those that are new on this path we now have to follow.
I’ll start:
Council tax, if you are now the only person (excluding full time students) that is 18+ in your household, you are entitled to a 25% discount on your council tax. You need to apply as soon as practical as the discount is from the date of application and not the date of death.
Death certificates are £11 each, you are advised to get more than one, I got 3, but have only needed 1 so far. You can always get more certificates later, they are still £11.
Bank accounts, once you inform the bank, they will freeze all of the bank accounts in the sole name of your partner and convert joint accounts to single names. You can still pay into the frozen accounts, but can only withdraw money for specific reasons such as funeral expenses. This means if you receive a cheque in the name of your partner, it can be quite hard to get your hands on the money as you can longer pay it into the ‘joint’ account, you may want to hold off on telling the bank for a couple of weeks.
It’s not a problem. It was just a thought I had. Your useful advice and tips will still be read here. Thank you for sharing. The information will be of a big help.
There is now a process called “Tell Us Once”, and on registering the death of my beloved husband, I was given a code and link to a government website.
This notifies several departments e.g. Council Tax, State Pension, Driving Licence, Blue Badge, Bus Pass etc. all in one go.
No death certificates were required for any government or council departments. Hope this information is of help to others.
Power of Attorney no longer applies once someone has died.
Yes I was told about the tell us once by the registrar when she contacted me to say that the death certificate was ready and although it was helpful there are quite a few things it doesn’t cover. I woke up on May 13th this year to find my wonderful soul mate had died in his sleep, I later found he had had a major heart attack in his sleep, he was only 42 and we had so many dreams that will never happen now
I found tell us once good when my husband died suddenly 8 weeks ago.
The biggest problem I had was getting my husband home. He died whilst on holiday in Scarborough and it took 4 weeks to get him back to Rotherham.
Could not believe the red tape l live in the same county -it was my own borough who helped me in the end.
Scarborough kept losing his paperwork.
The other problem I have had is with British Gas,
They want 2 email address for some reason and because I only have one they wanted me to use my husband’s.
How insensitive is that, I don’t know about anyone else but I am finding it difficult enough without all this hassle