Mom Passed Away, was an RBC Customer - seeking advice/guidnece
My mom recently passed away suddenly. She was an RBC customer, living in Ontario. To complicate things, I'm her only son but have been living in New Zealand since 2011. I don't believe my mom had a will. I will be back in Canada this week for the funeral and to try and sort things out.
Can someone let me know the best way to go about starting the process of closing out my mom's account? I know she had a banking account and credit card through RBC. I still need to find my mom's SIN card in her apartment but I know that my wife's family has been able to secure her wallet so I believe her bank card is in it. I will obviously get a death certificate but what is the best way to go about this? I tried calling RBC but was on hold for too long. I was going to go into her branch once I arrive this week to start the process.
I know her tablet is secured so I was going to see if I could get into her banking app to see what bills she has been paying to figure out who to notify. I don't expect she had a ton of money, maybe $10K or so. It would be great be able to access those funds to help cover some of the cost of the funeral but not sure how that would work.
Do I need to get a lawyer for this? I feel pressed for time as I need to leave Canada on October 26 so I want to try and get things rolling before I leave, or at least have things setup so that I can continue the process from New Zealand.
What's messed up is one of our last conversations, my mom talked about putting me on her account so I could have access. I advised her to talk to the bank to see the best way to go about this but assume she never got the chance. I was also an RBC customer and had put my mom as a joint account holder so she could deal with stuff if anything came up after we moved from Canada but I closed that account in 2016.
Any advice is appreciated.
EDIT - Thank you for all the reply's. There is a lot of good info and I appreciate everyone taking the time to share. I think I am just going to see what happens and try not to get too stressed. I just want to make sure that what ever my mom had in her bank doesn't get taken by the bank. She wasn't rich but she worked hard for it and I know she would want that to go to her grandkids for whatever they needed. I'd also like to try and offset some of the travel and funeral costs, as selfish as that may sound.