When a relative dies: the steps, in order
Nobody is ready, and everything arrives at once: the municipality, the bank freezing the accounts, the notary, the insurers, the contracts to close. Here is the real order of the steps, the traps that cost money, and what can wait.
The first few days
A doctor certifies the death and issues the certificate. The death is then declared to the municipality where it occurred, not where the person lived — a distinction that catches people out when someone dies in a hospital in another municipality. In practice the funeral director handles that declaration.
From it comes the death certificate, the document the bank, the insurers, the notary, the health fund, the employer, the energy supplier and the telecoms operator will each ask for. Hence the first practical advice on this page:
Ask for about ten copies of the death certificate at the outset. Every organisation wants one, nobody gives them back, and going back to the municipality for one more costs days each time.
Find out very early too whether there is a will. The Central Register of Wills is searched by a notary and answers quickly. Searching after the estate has been settled is the surest way of having to start again.
The frozen accounts
As soon as a bank learns of the death, it freezes the deceased's accounts. It also freezes, and this is what catches most people out, joint accounts and the surviving spouse's or legal cohabitant's own accounts. A whole household can find itself without access to its money overnight.
Unfreezing happens on production of a certificate or deed of succession — the next section explains which. In the meantime the law provides an advance to cover urgent costs: funeral expenses, rent, current bills. It is capped, both as a percentage of the balance and as an absolute amount.
Do not exceed the cap on that advance. Withdrawing more counts as accepting the estate: the survivor then loses the right to renounce it, and becomes liable for the deceased's debts out of their own assets. It is the most consequential mistake of the first weeks.
Contact the bank yourself rather than waiting for it to learn of the death some other way. It delays nothing — the freeze is coming regardless — but it starts the unfreezing procedure and makes the advance available at once.
Certificate or deed of succession
Two documents exist to prove who inherits, and confusing them costs money for nothing:
Many families go straight to a notary when the free certificate would have done. Check first whether your situation falls among the simple cases — the bank will tell you which document it requires, and the Legal Certainty office will tell you whether it can issue it.
Conversely, as soon as there is a will or property to divide, the notary is not an avoidable expense: they draw up the inheritance declaration, wind up the matrimonial property regime and record the division.
Accept, or not — the trap
An heir is not obliged to accept. Three options exist, and the choice is made before touching anything:
That is where the trap lies, and it recurs constantly: acting as an heir counts as tacit acceptance. Emptying the flat, selling the car, taking furniture, cashing a refund — even in good faith, even out of necessity, even to help — can be read as outright acceptance. You then find yourself liable for debts you knew nothing about.
While the financial position is unclear, dispose of nothing. Conservatory acts — paying for the funeral, insuring the property, preventing deterioration — do not count as acceptance. Acts of disposal do.
Insurance and pensions
Several contracts are triggered by a death, and none of them acts on its own: they have to be claimed.
Inform the deceased's employer too: a balance of pay is still due, holiday pay, sometimes group insurance and a bonus. None of it is paid to heirs spontaneously.
The contracts
The tedious part, and the one that generates the most unwarranted bills when forgotten. Every contract must be cancelled or transferred, with the death certificate in support:
The inheritance declaration
This is the tax side, and it runs to a strict calendar: the declaration must be filed within four months if the death occurred in Belgium, five months if elsewhere in the European Economic Area, six months outside it.
The amount payable depends first on the family relationship and then on the region, and the gaps are considerable — wider than between heirs of the same person in two neighbouring countries. Our page on inheritance duties sets out the three regional scales, the exemption for the family home, and the recent-gifts rule that catches up with estates people thought were settled.
One calendar point is worth anticipating: the duties are paid within a period following the filing, and an estate made up mostly of property can lack the cash to pay them. That is to be discussed with the notary from the start, not when the assessment arrives.
What we do not put a figure on
The cap on the advance from a frozen account, the amount health funds contribute to funeral costs, the age conditions and amounts of the survivor's pension and the transition allowance: those values are not worked through in our sources, and we do not publish them. The mechanisms are described above, and it is the mechanisms that drive the decisions.
The inheritance duty scales, by contrast, are sourced and published region by region on our dedicated page.
Finally, a contested or indebted estate is not settled alone. A notary is compulsory in some cases and useful in nearly all the others; a first orientation meeting is usually free. An heir who doubts the deceased's solvency does well to consult before touching a single asset.
A death is not an administrative emergency, except for the municipality and the will. Everything else bears a few days of reflection — and those few days are worth more than an irreversible act taken in shock.