I had some similar difficulties with credit card companies when my parents died. I am not sure about other states, but in Texas, there is a fee for every death certificate and Letters of Testimentory (for an Executor). It's like $20 for the first document and $5 for each additional document. Gets to be expensive when you are trying to close out accounts and ect for a deceased family member. However, if you explain this cost to the representative on the phone (and most were clueless that these documents from the state cost money), you can obtain a fax number where you can fax these documents and instructions on closing the credit card and thus save on mailing out expensive original documents. Although, I will say without mentioning corporate names, there were a couple companies whose reps were quite reluctant to come up with this fax number. My difficulty with them was earlier before my mother died and I had Power of Attorney papers for her. One credit card company (I shall not name), has a policy to automatically reject Power of Attorney papers when they are first submitted and require you to submit these papers a second time to them.

In actuallity, I encountered workers on the phone from several charity organizations who did NOT understand the words 'deceased', 'estate', and 'executor'.  One young man I had to ask 3 times, "Don't you know what deceased means? It means they are dead!"

I think the funniest thing though that happened was two years after my father's death, he gets a letter from Austin (the state capital), from the Department of Motor Vehicles saying that 'we have noticed you have not renewed your drivers license for two years. Please fill out this card and we'll get your driver's license renewed." By then it was just funny to me that the DMV is not notified of deaths.

"A lonely climber walks a tightrope to where dreams are born and never die!" - Billy Thorpe, song: Edge of Madness, album: East of Eden's Gate

Weapons of choice:

Poser Pro 2012, SR2, Paintshop Pro 8