First 30 Days: What to Do When Someone Dies and You're the One in Charge

At some point in the first two days, a funeral director will ask how many certified copies of the death certificate you want. You will not know. Nobody does.

The next thirty days are full of decisions like that - twenty small ones, made fast, in the dark, by someone who was never told the rules. This book is the rules.

Every good executor guide begins at the courthouse, when a judge appoints you - three to eight weeks after the death. This one covers the month before: the least-documented, most consequential stretch of the whole process, where the expensive mistakes get made and where families break.

Inside, sequenced by deadline instead of by topic:

- What to do today, this week, and by day thirty - and what only feels urgent
- The eight ordinary, well-intentioned actions that create personal liability (paying her bills with her debit card is number one)
- Your federal rights in the funeral home, and the three phone calls that can cut the cost in half
- Who must be told, in what order - and why doing it alphabetically will cost you
- The money that never goes through probate, and how to claim it in weeks instead of months
- A dedicated chapter for surviving spouses, whose rules are different - and better
- Word-for-word scripts for the conversations that go badly: the relative who wants an item, the sibling who thinks you're profiting, the collector who calls every day
- A directory of official court self-help sites for all fifty states, and a one-page test for whether you need probate at all

Plain language, checked against the primary sources - the federal rules and the state courts' own materials - before publication. The author is not an attorney, and this is not legal advice. It is the map that gets you to day thirty with nothing irreversible done, every decision written down, and your family still speaking to you.

Book One of The First 30 Days.