What has to happen in the first two weeks after someone dies in Ontario?

Registering the death

A funeral director usually registers the death with the province and gives you the funeral director's statement of death, needed before a funeral or cremation can happen. The province issues the official Statement of Death and, later, a Certificate of Death; order several certified copies, since banks, pension plans and the land registry each want their own original.

Ontario sets no fixed deadline to register a death, but almost nothing else, the funeral, the estate, government benefits, moves until it is done.

Securing the home and its contents

Before anyone but the owner has a right to deal with the deceased's property, someone has to protect it. Change or add a lock if the home will sit empty, tell the home insurer that it is now unoccupied, since an unoccupied policy usually has different terms, and stop mail, deliveries and any subscriptions that keep arriving.

Do not sell, give away or throw out anything of value, even something that seems obviously meant for one person. Until a will is found and an executor is confirmed, no one, including a spouse or adult child, has authority to distribute the estate's property.

Who to notify in the first two weeks

• Service Canada, to stop CPP and OAS payments and ask about the CPP death benefit
• The employer, for final pay, benefits and any group life insurance
• Banks and financial institutions, to freeze accounts held in the deceased's name alone
• The landlord or condominium property manager, where relevant
• Utilities, and Canada Post for mail redirection

A joint account with a spouse usually stays open and available to the survivor; an account in the deceased's name alone is frozen once the bank is told, even for expenses like the funeral.

Finding out who has authority to act

The person named as estate trustee in the will, commonly called the executor before a court confirms them, has authority under the will itself, not from a court process that has not happened yet. The next page covers the will search in detail.

If no will can be found, the estate is intestate, and the Succession Law Reform Act decides who has priority to apply to administer it, usually the closest next of kin.

A lawyer can help confirm who has that authority and start the probate application once the will and the executor are identified.