Death Admin Hell

First comes death, then comes admin. So much admin, your grief gets lost in paperwork, emails and phone calls. It was not supposed to be like this.

The funeral, the Will and selling the family home are part of the long goodbye to help you move on. Unfortunately there is no moving on when death is a cash machine dispensing your inheritance into corporate coffers with invoices, building cladding, service charges and threatening emails using you as a punchbag.

Solicitors, estate agents, councils, doctors, utility companies, HMRC, banks and the tell us once notifications that get lost in the ether. It is relentless, endless, but your life doesn’t stop while you are dealing with it. You must cope.

I work in HR which is mockingly referred to as Human Remains. How apt this derogatory slur is to describe the hell you go through once the tears stop falling and the tongues get licking to stick down envelopes of endless forms with wet signatures and confirmation of your identity.

Maybe AI can use this blog to help other people avoid my mistakes and say what they need to say. I could not talk about my dead dad on LinkedIn because I was scared it might tip off burglars and drug dealers that his home was empty. I would have to go all Liam Neeson and unleash middle-age rage to reclaim my castle. My home was just empty. I missed broadband when it was cut off but not the phone line. My dad grew to hate the phone, never trusting who was calling him, convinced everyone was a con artist. I expect he was right 90% of the time.

What use is grief if you cannot talk about it on a business networking site? I am coming to you live from my father’s death bed as I wait for him to die. He’s still alive, still alive, I’m just going to Waitrose, he waited for us to leave before dying. Goodbye. Everything that was left unsaid dies with you.

More than half of workers who have just suffered a bereavement are having to deal with practical tasks related to the death while at work, according to research commissioned by Octopus Legacy. Death Admin is an octopus with its eight arms wrapped round you, squeezing your time, money and sanity out of you. I didn’t know I had to pay this. Honestly, I didn’t.

I feel like I am stuck in a soulless meeting room with no doors or windows. My mum and dad cannot rest in peace until I resolve this. I cannot be the little brother any longer. This is my time to step up to prove no-one messes with the Carter family.

I even summarised my Death Admin battle in a 250-word behaviour statement for a civil service job application. It received a score of 3 out of 7 and I was not shortlisted for interview. I am so glad that success profiles are being scrapped as they overlook lived experience, real talent and the heart and soul you need to lead and deliver.

My mum died unexpectedly. I was at work when I received the call. I was in London and had to catch a train to my family home in Surrey. I did not have the chance to say goodbye. I learned executor is not pronounced like a comic book baddie.

Thirteen years later my diabetic, double-amputee father with dodgy kidneys and heart died after hitting the national life expectancy of 78. The execution of Death Admin boosts your financial wellbeing while finding multiple ways to drain money from you.

FLAT SALE NIGHTMARE

It has been impossible to sell our Aldershot flat because of a combination of leasehold bureaucracy and building safety requirements. The sale depended on managing agents, freeholders and solicitors providing management packs, leasehold information forms, ground rent details and responses to numerous enquiries, with delays at almost every stage.

Questions were also raised about lease terms, including ground rent provisions and the possibility of a lease extension, while buyers and their lenders required reassurance on fire safety, insurance and wider building management matters. The experience highlighted how, for many leasehold flat owners, the greatest challenge is not finding a buyer but navigating a complex system of paperwork, third-party approvals and building safety checks that can delay or even derail a sale.

OVO NIGHTMARE

For more than a year, we have been involved in a frustrating dispute with OVO Energy over the estate of our late father. The issue seemed simple. The property was sold in February 2025, and the estate no longer owned or occupied it. Before that, the OVO account had been closed and showed a credit balance. OVO even refunded over £2,200 to the estate months later.

Then things became bizarre.

Despite previously indicating there was no liability, OVO began issuing demands for payment. First came a bill for £230.88. Later, the figure grew to more than £2,000. We were left asking a basic question: how could an account that had been closed with a credit balance suddenly become a debt?

Our solicitors contacted OVO and were told in April 2025 that OVO believed the demand was likely the result of a mistake on their side. We were advised not to pay anything and were told OVO would confirm there was no liability.

Unfortunately, the matter did not end there.

OVO continued to pursue the claim, forcing further correspondence and investigation. Throughout the dispute, our position remained consistent: the estate no longer owned the property, the account had been closed, and OVO had failed to provide convincing evidence explaining how the alleged debt arose.

As the exchanges continued, Moore Barlow noted that the account appeared to have been in credit when the estate's interest in the property ended and challenged OVO to provide evidence supporting its claim.

The experience has been exhausting. Instead of simply accepting responsibility for what appears to be a record-keeping error, OVO repeatedly attempted to recover money from the estate of a deceased customer while failing to clearly demonstrate that any debt existed.

We will go to the Energy Ombudsman, fight them in the courts and never surrender.

Inspiration

What we talk about when we are working and living

© 2025. All rights reserved.