“If the account is a joint account, there should be no interruption to their use of the card,” says Betty Riess, Bank of America spokeswoman.
If the credit card was jointly owned, the co-owner assumes full ownership. Some states require both long-form and short-form death certificates. Some financial institutions will ask for death certificates, so gather copies, including for the three credit bureaus. You will also need to monitor incoming mail for six months to a year after the death. The sooner you start organizing the person’s financial accounts, the better, says Robert Siciliano, CEO of identity theft website .Īs a court-certified representative or surviving spouse, you can request a copy of the deceased’s credit report, which lists all the credit accounts issued in the dead person’s name. “Go through all of the person’s various cabinets, drawers and folders, seeking out invoices and statements,” says Siciliano. “Survivors must take action quickly, to avoid legal or financial problems,” says Lesavich. “Notification of death to the credit card issuer is not automatic, and credit cards are not automatically canceled upon a death.” One might assume with today’s technology, banks would know when someone dies, but that’s not the case. “You do not want to deal with identity theft of a loved one several years after they have passed away,” says Stephen Lesavich of Lesavich High-Tech Law Group. If you are the personal representative or executor of someone’s estate, here are the steps you should take: Contact credit bureaus to freeze creditĬontact the big three credit bureaus Equifax, Experian and TransUnion to request a credit freeze, which will prevent anyone accessing the credit file of your loved one.įreezing the credit files prevents criminals from opening new credit cards or other accounts using the name and Social Security number of the deceased. You’ll also need to gather some information and follow up. You should start by freezing the credit of a deceased family member. But leaving credit card accounts open can cause problems later on.
When a loved one dies, the task of notifying financial institutions and closing accounts sometimes gets pushed aside.