When My Parent Died, I Had No Idea Where to Start — So I Asked the Office to Tell Me Everything

My parent died.

I did not know where to start.

This is for people in that situation. I will write the order I went through.

My answer: go to the counter of the town office and ask, “Please tell me everything.” For the procedures at the office, they will tell you the order and the deadlines, all of it.

Why can I say that? I will write what happened to me when I lost my parent.

I Read a Book. But My Head Would Not Work

When my parent began to get sick, I started to think, in a vague way, about “if the time comes.”
I did not want to do a sloppy job and have trouble later.
So I bought one book, something like “What to do when a parent dies,” and learned the basics ahead of time.

My plan was simple. Anything I did not know, I could ask the town office.
The death notice, the pension, changing the registered owner, registering the inherited property…
I really did have the list of jobs in my head.

But when the time actually came, my head would not work.
I had the knowledge, but I could not accept that it was really happening.
I could no longer decide what to do first.

The Day I Said “Please Teach Me Everything” at the Town Office

In the end, I said this at the counter of the town office.

“My parent has died. Please tell me everything. What procedures do I need, and how do I do them?”

I did not feel ashamed.
Most people do not go through this many times.
I thought not knowing was only natural.

The person at the counter said something like this, I think.

“Almost everyone is doing these procedures for the first time.”
“Please stay calm. I will explain them in order, so it will be fine.”

I think that is what they told me.

They set the priorities as they went.
“First, this one.” “Next, this.” “This one can wait.”
They explained each one slowly.

All I could do was follow along and take notes as fast as I could.

The Number of Procedures from the Town Office Overwhelmed Me

The procedures they told me about at the office
were far more than I had thought.

The death notice.
Stopping the pension.
Ending the health insurance.
Filing a notice for long-term care insurance.
Freezing and closing the bank accounts.
Claiming the life insurance.
Changing the name on the property.
Filing a property tax notice.

Each time I finished one,
the next set of papers was waiting.
And the counters were all in different places.
The town office, the pension office, the legal affairs bureau, the bank.
All in different places, and I had to go on weekdays.

To be honest,
I had no time to grieve.
There was no time for crying.
Procedures with deadlines kept coming, one after another.
I put my feelings to one side
and just kept doing the paperwork.

How Many Days Off from Work? 7 Days Were Not Enough for Me

My company gave me 7 days off.
I finished things one by one, in the order of priority the town office gave me.
What I could not finish in 7 days, I did on my days off after that.
I worked shifts, so some of my days off were on weekdays, not on weekends, and I could visit the counters on those days.
That one thing helped me.

The Order I Went Through: The Actual Flow

When I put the steps in order, this is how it went. If you have these procedures ahead of you, use it as a guide.

Order	What to do	Deadline	Where
1	File the death notice	Within 7 days	Town office
2	End the health insurance	Within 14 days	Town office
3	Stop the pension	Employees Pension Insurance: within 10 days / National Pension: within 14 days	Pension office
4	File a notice for long-term care insurance	Within 14 days	Town office
5	Bank account procedures	As soon as you can	Each bank
6	Claim the life insurance	Within 3 years	Each insurance company
7	Change the name on the property (inheritance registration)	Within 3 years (required by law since 2024)	Legal affairs bureau, judicial scrivener

What I did was almost exactly the order the town office counter taught me. I did not put it together myself.

That is why I can say it. If you say “Please tell me everything” at the counter of the town office, they will tell you the order and the deadlines, all of it.

I Asked a Judicial Scrivener Only for the Registration: It Came to 68,970 Yen

For the actual work, like changing the name on the property,
I asked the judicial scrivener who had helped me when I built my house. (In Japan, a judicial scrivener is a licensed expert who handles property registration.)

He was, so to speak, someone I had known for years,
so I could leave it to him and feel safe.

But honestly, my memory was that it “cost something like 200,000 or 300,000 yen.”

It was a lot of money, so it bothered me. When I pulled out the registration papers, I found the receipt too.

The real amount was 68,970 yen.

Item	Amount
Fee for the judicial scrivener	54,000 yen
Consumption tax (8%)	4,320 yen
Revenue stamps (registration and license tax)	10,650 yen
Total	68,970 yen

I think I felt it was “expensive” back then, so I remembered it as 3 to 4 times the real amount.

This was not the cost of asking him to handle everything, even getting the documents. It is what it cost when I gathered the documents myself and asked the judicial scrivener only for the registration.

Looking Back: “What I Wanted First”

When I look back now,
the thing I wanted most for the inheritance was not “accurate knowledge.”

What I wanted was

• The whole picture, sorted out
• The order of priority
• The points that matter in my own case
• A path to where I should go for advice

I think I wanted someone to show me these things first.

The town office explains the rules.
A judicial scrivener or a lawyer will do the job for sure if you ask them.

But there is a step before that:
“How do I even sort out my own situation?”
Places that help you put that together are fewer than you would think.

Summary: The First Move You Need to Make Now

To you, whose parent has died and who does not know where to start.

Let me sort out the order I went through one more time.

1. First, go to the counter of the town office. Say, “Please tell me everything.”
2. Finish things one by one, in the order they give you.
3. For the parts you cannot do yourself, leave them to a judicial scrivener. It costs money, but the price is fair.

That is all.

The grieving can wait until the procedures settle down.

Added Later: Procedures That Come Later and Are Easy to Forget

Apart from the “do it now” procedures you learn at the town office, some have deadlines months or years later. If you forget these, you lose money, so I put them together here.

Item	Deadline	Where	Note
Final income tax return for the deceased	Within 4 months	Tax office	Report the income of the person who died
Inheritance tax return and payment	Within 10 months	Tax office	I wrote a separate article on this
Claim for high-cost medical expenses	Within 2 years	Health insurance	You may get money back
Claim for unpaid pension	Within 5 years	Pension office	The family can claim pension payments owed through the month of death
Property tax notice	Depends on the city or town	Town office	If you register the inheritance, notice may come automatically