Bereavement support

Register the death

Once you’ve received the medical certificate from a doctor or coroner, you’ll need to register the death within five days, or eight days if you live in Scotland. To do this in the UK, you’ll have to book an appointment with a Register Office. If you’d like more information, please visit www.gov.uk/register-a-death.

If the person you know passed away in the Isle of Man, you’ll need to register the death within five days. You can find out more information on how to do this by visiting www.gov.im/categories/births-deaths-and-marriages/register-a-death/.  

Use the ‘Tell us once’ service

Tell us once is a free UK service that lets you notify many government and council departments that someone has passed away. It’s designed to save time and effort, so that you don’t have to contact multiple organisations at such a difficult time. You’ll be offered this service when registering the death with a registrar. 

However, the ‘Tell us once’ service only applies to government organisations and not private ones. This means that you’ll still need to contact some companies directly. These include:

• Financial institutions such as banks, insurance providers, mortgage providers and personal pension providers. 
  
• Utility companies
  
• Medical providers such as GPs, opticians and dentists 
  

You’ll also need to let us know directly if someone you know has passed away. Once we’re made aware, we’ll let you know the next steps.

Notifying a company that a loved one has passed away can be daunting, but we’ll guide you every step of the way. You can either tell us over the phone or by completing our online form here. 

We’ll ask you for: 

• The full name, date of birth, address and policy number (if known) of the person who passed away
• The date of death
• Your relationship to the person who passed away
• Your contact information including your telephone number and address. If there’s someone else who we should contact, such as an executor, please let us know. 

Once you’ve notified us, we’ll send you a letter or email confirming what happens next. We might ask to see the original death certificate and other supporting documents and take a copy for our records. If you send us any original documents, we’ll return them to you by recorded delivery for safe keeping.

There are some policies which might make continuing payments or pay out a lump sum to a beneficiary. To find out if you’re entitled to any beneficiary payments, you’ll need to make a claim.

If there are any payments on the policy due to be paid to a beneficiary, we’ll confirm this in writing to you or the executor of the will. 

We might ask you  or the executor to:

• Send us a copy or original death certificate
• Provide us with a copy of the will 
• Complete a claims form

If you don’t have some of the information we’re asking for, please let us know. We understand that gathering documents can take time and we’re here to help in any way that we can.

Just in case you need any more information of guidance, we’ve put together a list of resources that we hope can help.

• Canada Life Bereavement-Guide.pdf
  A downloadable PDF with step-by-step guidance on dealing with bereavements.
• Canada Life online bereavement form
  Notify Canada Life of a death.
• Tell us once service
  Tell us once is a free UK service that lets you notify many government and council departments that someone has passed away. 
  
• Government support pages
  Helpful guidance on what to do when someone dies.

Helpful grief-support charities

• The Good Grief Trust
  Support organisation run by bereaved individuals for the bereaved.
• Quaker Social Action funeral cost support
  A guide providing practical support to help meet the costs of a funeral.
• Cruse 
  Helping people through one of the most painful times in life – with bereavement support, information and campaigning.
• Marie Curie 
  Guides, information and support to help when coping with grief, and end-of-life care.
• Macmillan
  Guides, information and support to help when coping with grief, and end-of-life care.