First 3 Months

Determine & Notify Heirs

Based upon the contents of a valid will, and/or local statutes, determine who the heirs are, and let them know. In many cases, the probate process includes specific requirements for notification of heirs (see Probate Notice). You will likely not be able to definitively tell them what, if anything, they will be inheriting until after you have determined overall estate solvency and sorted out various allocation questions, but it's nice to keep the heirs informed of the process (and required by law under certain circumstances).

Establish a Family Allowance

If the decedent left behind dependent family members, you may want to provide a living allowance for them from their share of estate assets ... if they need it to continue their accustomed lifestyle while the estate is being settled. If the estate is going through probate, you will likely need to seek permission for such an allowance from the court, and note that there are often province-specific laws about such allowances, including laws that can actually increase their share of the estate, and give priority to such an allowance over paying most estate debts . give priority to such an allowance over paying most estate debts. If such an allowance isn't necessary in your case, just mark the task N/A (Not Applicable) on the Tasks tab.

It's not your legal responsibility as executor, but you may also want to use the Canada Benefits Finder to help any surviving family find available government assistance, potentially including Canada Pension Plan (CPP) survivor's pension, Canada Pension Plan (CPP) children's benefits, allowance for survivor aged 60-64, and veterans survivor assistance.

Forward Decedent's Mail to Yourself

It will be easier for you to have the decedent's mail delivered directly to you, which you can arrange via the nearest post office. You can save a little time by filling out a mail forwarding form ahead of time, or even purchasing it online via your Canada Post account, but you must actually go to the post office at some point and show:

• Your government-issued photo ID
• A death, medical examiner’s, funeral director’s, or cremation certificate
• Proof of appointment as legal representative (e.g., Grant of Letters of Probate, Letters of Administration, Statutory Declaration Form, etc.)
• See Canada Post: Deceased Mail Forwarding for more details.

Note that the postal service sometimes has difficulty forwarding mail if the decedent was living at an institution (such as an assisted living facility), since the postal service delivers mail to such institutions in bulk and leaves it up to the institution to sort out individual addresses. In such cases, the institution has responsibility for forwarding mail, but this doesn't always happen. Whether or not you are receiving forwarded email, you may want to check with any such institution to see if they have mail for the decedent.

If you opt not to have the decedent's mail forwarded at all, you may at least want to minimize junk mail so you don't have to go through it (junk mail will normally get filtered out during the forwarding process). You can do this for free online via the Canadian Marketing Association Do Not Mail Service and the Canada Bereavement Agency  (you may want to submit to both to provide the most complete coverage).

Carefully go through all remaining mail. You will almost certainly uncover previously unknown debts over time, and it is your fiduciary duty to ensure that these are paid (or forgiven). You may also discover dividend checks, refunds, life insurance policies, and more, not to mention correspondence from friends who should be informed of the death.

Notify Life Insurance Companies

If the decedent held any current life insurance policies, you may want notify the issuing companies, and ensure they payout in accordance with the terms of the policy. Often it is the beneficiaries that do all this, however, and the executor has no legal obligation in this regard.

Notify RRSPs and Other Beneficiary Accounts

Except in Quebec, a number of financial instruments (such as RRSPs and LIRAs) pass directly to any beneficiaries named on the account. While the executor has no control over such assets if the beneficiary has been properly designated, you should notify the account managers so that they can begin their proceedings. In Quebec, however, only a will can designate such beneficiaries, so you will need to handle these types of assets like any others. Regardless of province, and even if an asset transfers automatically, note that you may still need to submit certain tax filings and/or related taxes: see Retirement Account Taxes.

Notify RCMP about Firearms

If the estate contains firearms and you will need the Canadian Firearms Program to process a firearms transaction for you (i.e., you want to sell it, or it is a potentially prohibited firearm), you will first need to submit Declaration of Authority to Act on Behalf of an Estate (Form RCMP 6016) to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). In fact, many estate lawyers recommend you submit a Form RCMP 6016 regardless of your intentions.

See also Dealing with Firearms.

Notify Credit Cards

If the decedent had any credit cards (and who doesn't?), notify the issuers of the death, so that they will stop adding late fees and other penalties. Call each card issuer and ask to speak with “Deceased Account Services” or the “Estate Unit.” You should also try to figure out whether there were any recurring fees being charged to a card, so you can make other payment arrangements if the associated services should continue for now (e.g., electricity bills, home insurance payments, etc.).

Of course, you will want to close these credit card accounts eventually, but you typically cannot close such an account without paying off any amounts owed, and you normally should not pay off estate debts until you have published a Notice of Death, undergone the mandated waiting period, and had a chance to assess the overall financial status of the estate (see Resolving Debts).

Notify Other Agencies

While not mandatory, it's nice to clean up other official records so that the decedent's name doesn't later get entangled in various fraudulent activities:

• Contact the organization that issues driver's licenses in the decedent's province (create an EstateExec estate for information about your province)
• Send a letter to each major credit reporting agency (Equifax, TransUnion), asking them to place a death notice on the decedent's credit report. Enclose a copy of the death certificate with the letter, and state the decedent’s full name, Social Insurance Number, address, date of birth, and date of death.

Obtain a TAN for the Estate

A Trust Account Number (TAN) is a CRA identification number for the estate, which you can obtain by filing Form T3APP (think of a TAN as something like a social insurance number, but for an estate, not a person). If you plan to file estate income taxes electronically, you will need to obtain a TAN in advance; if you plan to file via paper, you don't necessarily need to do this, and the CRA will generate a number for you when they receive a paper return.

Open an Estate Bank Account

You do not have authority to write checks from the decedent's bank account. Even if you had power of attorney, that generally disappears upon the decedent's death.

What you need to do is to open an estate account at a reputable financial institution, with you named as the executor, so you can easily pay estate expenses and deposit checks. While it would be convenient to open such an account immediately, many banks will make you wait to use such an account until you have official estate documentation, such as a copy of the death certificate, and in Québec the will search certificates.

You may find it easiest to open an estate account at a bank where the decedent already had an account, but different banks have different policies, and your particular circumstances may warrant doing business elsewhere. If you have a co-executor, be aware that bank policies about estates with co-executors vary significantly, so if your first choice has restrictions you don't like (for example, all co-executors must co-sign any check), you may want to shop around a bit.

Before you get the account opened, you may end up paying some estate expenses out of your own pocket, to be reimbursed once you can get access to estate funds (see Estate Financials for more details).

Find and Claim Estate Assets

A key responsibility of the executor is to locate and collect all estate assets (see Finding Assets for detailed advice). While this task is listed in "First 3 Months", and you should start in this timeframe, this task may take somewhat longer to actually complete. It's not always easy to find all estate assets, and it can be a bit of work to claim ownership of each asset for the estate. Moreover, a number of asset holders will want to see a copy of your official Letters of executor appointment, so you'll need to get probate underway before those assets can be claimed (unless you are following a Small Estates procedure, which has its own built-in delays).

Deal with Firearms

While there may be specific laws regarding firearms in your particular province or territory, an executor usually has the same authority as the deceased to take possession of a firearm, even if the executor is not personally licensed to possess firearms. That being said, firearms are subject to additional regulation: see Dealing with Firearms for important details.

Publish a Notice of Death in a Local Newspaper

If the estate is going through probate, the executor is often required to publish a notice of death in the local newspaper where the decedent lived. The purpose of this notice is designed to inform potential creditors of the death, and while details vary from province to province, creditors typically have from 1 to 6 months to contact the estate about any debt claims. If a potential creditor misses the claims deadline then the executor is protected from personal any personal liability related to the debt, and in some provinces, the creditor's debt would be completely invalidated. See Finding Debts, and below a is sample EstateExec Task describing these details.

Notify Extended Acquaintances

If there are other acquaintances that haven't already been told about the death, it's nice to let them know (often in response to correspondence you will receive in the decedent's mail). This process can also be an interesting opportunity to learn more about your loved one's life.

Consider Online Media Accounts

Social media accounts, email accounts, photo storage accounts, and the like do not normally have an associated monetary value, and thus do not officially need to be included in an estate's inventory. That being said, an executor may still want to shut these down, memorialize them, or otherwise transition their contents. Trying to track all these down and somehow wrapping them up can be A LOT of work, so you'll want to consider whether handling these online media accounts is really something worthwhile: after all, the deceased is gone, and you are still living your life. At a minimum, you may want to pick and choose only the ones you consider most important. See Estate Administration of Online Media Accounts for links to the relevant pages for a few of the more popular services.

Discount $$:  GoodTrust offers a digital executor service that can handle resolving these types of online accounts for you after the death of the account owner. See Task: Consider Online Media Accounts for a 25% discount on these services. Note that EstateExec does not recommend or receive compensation from third-party companies; we provide these discount offers simply as a service to our customers.

Determine Asset Values

Asset values are used to determine appropriate: taxes, estate settlement process, allocation among heirs, and adjusted cost base for future sales (by the estate or eventually by the heirs).

You may want to do some quick, initial estimates in order to determine the best estate settlement approach, but eventually you will need detailed, defensible valuations for every estate asset ... as of the time of death, and as of the time of settlement (sale or distribution). See Determining Value for detailed valuation advice.

Start to Assess Estate Solvency

You should have a pretty good sense by this point as to whether the estate owes more than it is worth, or not. If the estate clearly owes significantly more than it is worth, you may want to wash your hands of the whole thing, declare the estate bankrupt, and turn it over to the courts for disposition.

Begin an Asset Disposition Plan

Some assets may be explicitly called out in the will for specific disposition. You may need to sell some assets to raise cash to pay off debts. Some heirs may want their share of the estate to include particular assets. You need to develop an asset plan that satisfies your legal obligations and preferably, maximizes heir happiness. See Managing Assets.