You're the Executor. Here's the Order to Do Things In.

Someone you love died, and you're holding the will — or you just found out you're named in it. You don't need to do everything today. You need to do the right things, in the right order, so nothing important slips while you're grieving. That's what this is: the sequence, front to back.

A quick note on the word "executor." It means the person named in a will to carry out its instructions — pay the debts, gather the assets, and give what's left to the people named. In some states you'll see "personal representative" on the forms; it means the same job. When I use a legal term, I'll define it right where it shows up.

Take a breath. Here's the order.

Week one: secure people, then property

Before you touch a single financial account, make sure the living are safe and the property is locked down.

Handle dependents and pets first. If children, an elderly spouse, or animals depended on the person who died, arrange care for them today. Everything else can wait a few days. This is not an executor task, strictly speaking — but you're the one standing there, so do it.

Lock the house and secure valuables. Change nothing, remove nothing, but make sure the home is locked and the obvious valuables — jewelry, cash, firearms, important papers — are safe from foot traffic. Estates lose more to well-meaning relatives "taking a keepsake" in the first week than to any other cause. You're not accusing anyone. You're just doing your job.

Find the will and don't move out of order. You need the original document, not a photocopy. Common spots: a home safe, a desk drawer, a safe deposit box, or the office of the attorney who drafted it. If you only find a copy, note that — some states treat a missing original as a sign the will was revoked, and you'll want an attorney's read on that specific problem.

Days two through seven: get the paperwork that lets you act

Here's the frustrating truth nobody tells you: right now, you have almost no legal power. The will names you, but until a court confirms it, banks and brokerages won't talk to you. So this stretch is about getting the two documents that unlock everything.

Order 10 to 15 certified death certificates. A certified copy is an official version with a raised or colored seal — not a printout. The funeral home usually orders these for you; if not, the county vital records office does. Get more than you think you need. Every institution wants its own copy, and reordering later costs time you won't want to spend. Ten is a floor, not a target.

File the will with the probate court and request Letters Testamentary. Probate is the court process that confirms the will and gives you authority. "Letters Testamentary" is the court order that proves you're the executor — the single piece of paper that makes banks cooperate. You file the will (most counties require this within a set window; check yours), the court schedules a brief hearing or reviews the paperwork, and then issues the Letters. Budget two to six weeks for this depending on your county's backlog. Nothing financial moves fast until you hold it.

While you wait, keep going.

Weeks two through four: open a headquarters and take inventory

Open an estate bank account. Once you have Letters and an EIN — an Employer Identification Number, the tax ID for the estate, free from the IRS website in about ten minutes — open a checking account in the estate's name. Every dollar in and out of the estate flows through here. Do not, ever, run estate money through your personal account. Commingling funds is the fastest way to turn a clean job into a legal headache and to make heirs suspicious of you. One account, clean records.

Build the asset and debt list. This is the heart of the work, so give it real hours across a couple of weeks. You're making two columns.

Assets: bank accounts, retirement accounts, life insurance, the house, vehicles, the contents of that safe deposit box, any business interest. Note that some assets skip probate entirely — anything with a named beneficiary (life insurance, most retirement accounts) or held jointly with right of survivorship passes directly to that person. You still list them, but they may not be yours to distribute.

Debts: mortgage, car loans, credit cards, medical bills, utilities, taxes owed. You'll pay these from the estate before anyone inherits a dime. That's the rule, and it protects you: heirs come last, creditors come first.

Notify the institutions that need to stop. Send a certified death certificate to Social Security (the funeral home often reports this, but confirm it), any pension provider, and the credit bureaus. Cancel subscriptions and memberships as you find them. Redirect the mail through the post office so bills stop piling up at an empty house.

Month two and beyond: notify creditors, pay, then distribute

Notify creditors formally. Your state sets the rules here — usually a published notice in a local paper plus direct mail to known creditors — and it starts a clock. After that window closes (often three to six months), creditors who didn't come forward generally can't collect. This step exists to protect you: it caps the estate's exposure so you can safely distribute later.

Pay valid debts and taxes in order. Not all debts are equal. Funeral costs, taxes, and secured debts like the mortgage generally get paid before unsecured ones like credit cards. If the estate doesn't have enough to cover everything, the order matters a great deal — and that's a moment to call an attorney rather than guess. Also file the final income tax return for the person who died, and check whether an estate tax return is required (most estates owe no federal estate tax, but the return may still be needed).

Distribute what's left, then close. Only after debts and taxes are settled and the creditor window has closed do you give the beneficiaries their shares as the will directs. Get a signed receipt from each person. Then file a final accounting with the court — a plain record of everything that came in and went out — and request that the court formally close the estate and release you from your duties. That last step is the one people forget. Do it. It's what officially ends your responsibility.

A realistic word on the clock and the cost

If this feels like a lot, it's because it is. Families spend around $13,000 and somewhere between 13 and 20 months settling an estate, on average (source). Knowing that up front helps: you're not behind, and you're not doing it wrong because it's taking months. It takes months for almost everyone.

When to hire a professional

You can do most of a straightforward estate yourself, especially with clean records and cooperative heirs. Hire help when you hit any of these:

• The estate is insolvent — more debts than assets. Getting the payment order wrong here can make you personally liable. Worth every dollar of an attorney's time.
• There's a will contest or a feuding family. The moment someone threatens to challenge the will, stop and get counsel.
• Real estate in more than one state, a business to value or sell, or a possible estate tax return. These have traps a probate attorney navigates in an afternoon that would cost you weeks.
• You simply can't carry it. If grief or distance makes the work impossible, a probate attorney can shoulder the filings for a fee. That's not failure. That's good judgment.

For everything else, a few focused hours a week and a clear order of operations will get you through.

If you'd like the whole sequence in one place

If holding all of this in your head feels like too much — and it usually does at first — our Executor's Playbook lays out this exact order as a working checklist, with the forms, the timelines, and the "who to notify" lists ready to fill in. We built it so you're never reconstructing the order at midnight.

You've got this. One step, then the next.