What an executor should do in the first week

Preserve before you transfer

The first week is usually about protection, documents, and communication. It is not the time to promise property, empty a home, or pay every bill that arrives.

• Secure property, mail, digital accounts, vehicles, and pets.
• Locate the original will and any trust documents.
• Create a contact list and one contemporaneous activity log.
• Confirm who may order death certificates and how many institutions need originals.

Authority comes before transactions

A person named in a will may still need court-issued authority. A small-estate affidavit may have a mandatory waiting period. Financial institutions can require their own evidence even when state law permits a transfer.

Do not combine personal and estate funds. Keep receipts for necessary preservation expenses and ask how reimbursement is handled under the selected route.

How many death certificates to order

This is the most-asked practical question in the first week, and the honest answer is that it depends on how many institutions demand an original rather than a copy. The death-certificate and notification guide covers the counting method, eligibility to order, and the early notices in full.

Count the institutions, not the assets: each bank, brokerage, insurer, retirement plan, pension, motor-vehicle agency, county recorder, and employer that requires an original certified copy. Many institutions accept a copy or return the original after sighting it, and some accept a digital verification. Ordering more later is possible but slow, so most executors order somewhat more than their count.

Certified copies are issued by the vital-records office of the state or county where the death occurred, and the funeral director can usually order them as part of the arrangements.

Do not pay debts yet

Bills arrive quickly and the instinct is to clear them. Resist it. Estate debts have a statutory payment order in every state, and paying a low-priority creditor before a high-priority one can make the person who paid personally responsible for the difference.

Keep paying what protects property — insurance, utilities in an occupied home, mortgage payments that prevent default — and record every payment. Everything else waits for authority and for the creditor process the chosen route requires.

What to say to family

Say what is true and small: that you are locating documents, that nothing can be distributed until the route is established, and that you will share the process as it becomes clear.

Avoid promising specific property to specific people. Beneficiary designations, survivorship, debts and allowances routinely change who receives what, and a promise made in week one is remembered long after the reason it could not be kept.

Build one case file before the paperwork branches

Create one secure index for the death certificate count, will and trust location, asset statements, deeds, insurance, creditor mail, court contacts, and every expense advanced. Keep originals separate and log where each certified copy goes.

A single chronology prevents the same task from being repeated by different relatives and gives the eventual personal representative a record of what happened before formal authority existed. Do not put passwords, full account numbers, or identity documents in a shared family spreadsheet.