How to Clean Out a Dead Parent's House

Ok, that's a bit of a strange title, but it's the best I could come up with.

A few years ago, my wife's father passed away and we helped (with several other relatives) clean out his home. It was an interesting experience for sure -- seeing a lifetime of stuff that had been accumulated. I had responsibility for the garage, so I had mostly tools, screws, and the like to go through. He was an organized guy, but still he had a TON of what I could only deem as junk. It was a tedious process.

In this piece from MoneyCentral, they list several tips on what you should do when cleaning out a dead person's home. There are several good tips in the article, and I'd like to highlight a few of them. Let's start on what to do from a financial perspective:

Getting a handle on your parent's financial life is the priority. To keep the homeowners policy in force, ask the insurance company to change the name of the insured to the estate; that way, you ensure that property-damage and liability coverage stay in force. Continue to pay the mortgage (if any) and utility bills. As soon as possible, change the locks on the house -- you never know who might have a key.

Scout through the house for wallets, checkbooks, financial statements, information about safety-deposit boxes, birth certificates, insurance policies, stock certificates and so on. Did Dad write a will, and do you know where it is? Jeanne K. Smith, a professional organizer in Palo Alto, Calif., says that many seniors don't keep all their paperwork together and may have filed it in unexpected places. Keep any keys you find in one location so that they can eventually be matched to the proper locks.

My wife's father had a will and named his lawyer as executor. Things ran fairly smoothly on the financial end as a result. But we still had to clean out the house. Here are some tips for what to do during this process:

• For each item, decide whether to keep it, donate it, sell it or trash it.

• If you and your siblings get hung up on the 20% of things with emotional or monetary value, professional organizer Barry Izsak recommends that you set them aside and focus on the 80% no one cares about: the Tupperware and lawn tools.

• Look everywhere and in everything. Poitras found $1,100 in cash in a boot. When Izsak closed his parents' home, he gave a piano bench full of music to a neighbor, who returned the $50,000 life-insurance policy he found among the sheaves. Smith has found diamond rings in Band-Aid boxes and stock certificates in folders behind kitchen curtains.

• Get an appraisal. If you have doubts about an item's value, hire a personal-property appraiser. Miller knows of a case in which $30,000 worth of 17th-century Japanese prints ended up at the dump.

The one tip that stood out to me was to look everywhere. I know my parents have stored money in socks in the past (a place I would never think of looking), so I will certainly use this tip if I ever have to clean out their home.

There are several other great tips, so check out the article if this situation applies to you.

BTW, I plan to keep less and less stuff as I get older so my kids don't have to sort through as much stuff. We'll see how that plan goes. ;-)

Comments

[Lord]

I would strongly urge them to find places for the expensive items and heirlooms while still alive. If no one is interested, then auction if off and gain the best price they can. Leaving it for heirs to determine it's value and what to do with it is hopeless. They won't have the time and knowledge and the cost of liquidation will be high.

[db]

This really hit my family hard after my grandmother passed away. My grandmother was living in the same house (with attached family store) where she'd been raised and my mother had been raised -- 100 full years of occupation by a whole family full of depression-trained packrats.

It took my mom and dad close to TWO YEARS to sort through and dispose of all the stuff that had never been cleaned out. My parents also took nearly a year to clean out my great-aunt's house down the block from grandma's house.

It was insane and heartbreaking. And yes, my parents found money stashed in the strangest places. (They found thousands of dollars in cash tucked around in various hidey-holes in my aunt's house.) Not to mention a wide variety of scattered financial documents. (For example, they found that my grandmother had boxes filled with every cancelled check from the late 1940s on.)

CAVEAT: My parents live about 100 miles away and were making one or two 3-5 day trips each month to do all this sorting and purging, and they were the only ones close enough to do this.

My mom and dad have always tended to be packrats themselves, but after this experience they started organizing and purging their own stuff. Hopefully when we get to that unhappy moment I won't find nearly the same mess.

DB

[Katy Raymond]

I've personally done two of these homes thus far--my mother's accumulation of 50 years when she moved into assisted living, and my mother-in-law's 50-year stash when she also needed to be in a one-room apartment.

They are BOTH horrible packrats--then and now. Even in tiny apartments, every time I go I have to throw away junk mail, etc, to be able to sit down. They are completely overrun with it. But it's not just old age and senility--they were always like this!! My MIL always has and still does save thousands of packets of saltines from restaurants (now her facility dining room). All crushed, but she can't throw them away. She might go hungry! :) My mother? 28 pairs of manicure scissors, and counting. Money everywhere, important documents scattered in with clipped obits from 40 years ago. Green stamps, anyone?

I do have a friend who performed this function for three maiden aunts upon their respective deaths. She and her hubby ended up inheriting $660,000 for their trouble! Most folks aren't so fortunate! We're getting saltines and manicure scissors! :)

[rdub98]

My mother and father cleaned out my grandfather's house after he passed and found money in some of the strangest places. My grandfather told my father before he died "Check all the pockets," meaning to check all of the coats in the closet. They had a yard sale afterward and up for sale was a blanket. Someone was looking at it, unfolded it, and out fell 5 $100 bills. Boy, what a bargain that could have been, huh? Luckily, after that, they organized their documents all in one place and are not "rat holers" with their money.

[kristen]

My mother and I also went thru this process and in return we started a new business http://www.seniors-moving-forward.com to assist families in both elder transition to new housing and cleaning out houses upon a death.

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[melissa]

What is the time limit I have to clean a deceased parents apartment? Landlord changed locks 5 days after death before I could obtain all personal effects.