I'm so sorry for the death of your father. May he rest in peace. I hope this is not offensive, but I will pray for you and your family.

This post is probably too long and detailed for you to try to deal with now. Maybe just the first two paragraphs and the first three sentences of the third paragraph to start with. You will probably need some kind of death certificate, probably from the coroner.

My sister was the legal next of kin when my mother died. She immediately notified the rest of the family. If he was religious, you should notify his church officials and start thinking about a funeral and a funeral home. Many churches have people who help with planning a funeral or a memorial service. Some funeral homes have them, too. Be sure to let them help you. If you know whether he would have preferred a burial or a cremation, you can discuss it with your relatives, especially your sister. If you know that he would have preferred no funeral service, you can discuss that with your sister, too. If he was ever in the military, he might have some veterans' benefits, a right to a military funeral, a burial in military cemetery or columbarium, and a grave marker. Having military at a funeral can be very nice for many people. If he served in the military, you should contact his branch of the service. and see what they do.. They probably have somebody who helps with any benefits and funerals. You also might want to plan obituaries for the newspapers in the area. The LNOK sister arranged for my mother's cremation after she asked each of us siblings if it was ok with us. She bought four smaller urns so she could have the ashes divided and given to each sibling. Some churches don't allow the ashes to be divided. They have to be kept in one place.

My sister had the keys to our mother's house. She arranged for the adult relatives to meet there to clean it, do some repairs, and sort through my mother's things for what they each wanted to keep. She also found out what the younger nieces and nephews needed--things like dishes or flatware or furniture or bed linens and such. My brother parked a rented truck next to her house and transported his things and the things for his young adult children to the other side of the country where they all lived. My sister from a different part of the country boxed things up so they could be shipped back to her home. They took a day off and came to visit me and brought me boxes of my mother's Catholic religious articles that they thought I might like or would know how to see that they got to people who needed them, because the rest of the family wasn't Catholic anymore. I organized them, untangled the rosaries and bagged each one separately, and took them to our parish church.

I think my sister who was the legal next of kin took care of the photos and the piano music. At an earlier time she had taken all the family photos and had them copied and sent a set to each of us siblings. Now there are digitizing services that will copy the photos to CDs or DVDs or flash drives which you can share with your sister. It's a good way to save the older photos so they don't deteriorate with time, too. Be sure to get a reputable digitizing service. You can ask if any of the other relatives want any photos or keep sakes and scan the photos into a computer and send them via email. They may especially like the ones where they are included in the photo. The sister who was LNOK loved my grandmother's copper ware items and kept them. She also loved what was left of my mother's silver plated flatware. She didn't keep the sterling. I think it went to a niece or nephew. The people who were at the house said what they especially wanted to have of my mother's things and were able to make nice agreements about them. There were things of our grandmother there, too. My mother hadn't asked for a funeral, so they just took some time off from cleaning and sorting and sat in the living room and shared the funny and happy things they remembered about her and cried and laughed and had some refreshments.

One of my cousins got all of her father's things, including all of the family photos of his generation and our grandparents' generations and even earlier. She only shared a few of them via email. There were many many photos of my siblings in those albums and also photos of the grandparents' siblings and get togethers. She wanted to cut them up and scrap book them, but doing it would lose all of the historical things in the backgrounds of the photos like cars, farm implements, furniture styles. old books my father and aunt owned which grandma read to my siblings and me, and pictures of the houses they lived in. She kept nearly all of those family things. My sister who was the LNOK got the ones from my aunt and saw that they got circulated. She brought the old letters and baptism certificates, etc. to my apartment, and we scanned them with my very large powerful scanner and emailed them to everybody. The LNOK sister has the originals. I showed her how to save the paper things in acid free sheet protectors, so they wouldn't deteriorate any more than already. Those sheet protectors aren't expensive and can be put into a ring binder. You get them at a store that sells office supplies. She and I have asked for a lot more of the family photos from that cousin. Her sister even asked her to send them. She hasn't, and it's been quite a few years now. Their brother didn't know the value of the Indian blankets and pottery and old things that were stored in my aunt's home and the historical value of the records of the leger books from my grandfather's grocery and general merchandise store on the Indian reservation. Those records could have enabled historians to reconstruct many details of life there from the early 1900s until the late 1950s. By the time we warned him about it, it was too late. (Those cousins are much younger than my siblings and I. They knew almost nothing about those grandparents.) One of my father's youngest cousins was able to provide some photos and genealogical information to fill in the gaps. The photos and letters my LNOK sister rescued from my aunt's home also filled in some gaps. There are some uncomfortable feelings about not sharing my uncle's family photo albums. We manage to be polite and watch each other's web pages but don't correspond much. I did their genealogy for them on both sides, and tracked down some genealogical information about my uncle's birth mother which I emailed to them with information about the hospital, and the orphanage and the nuns who ran it and how the toddlers got there. (The mothers had to keep the babies for a while.)

Those are some things to be careful about.

My LNOK sister arranged for the sale of my mother's house and things that weren't given to relatives. The real estate agents insisted on a few repairs. My brother was able to come back out here and do them, so there was little cost involved. My LNOK sister worked as an accountant at a law firm, so she notified the pension plans, disposed of my mother's stocks and other assets, paid the taxes and bills, and made the appropriate bank accounts to store the various moneys, until everything was sorted out, and she could divide my mother's estate properly. She did a good job and kept superb records. I think she used Microsoft's Excel program, and emailed us copies as the various financial details were completed. You will want to keep your relatives posted about what you are doing, so they won't feel left out.

Peace to you and your family.