What to do when someone dies abroad

First calls

Contact the travel insurer straight away, before agreeing to anything. Insurance often covers repatriation, medical costs, translation and legal fees, and insurers usually have approved funeral directors in the country. Agreeing arrangements before you speak to them can invalidate the cover. If you don't know whether there was a policy, check bank accounts, credit card benefits and any package holiday booking.

Then contact the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. If the death happened while the person was on holiday or living abroad, the FCDO's consular staff can tell you the local process, give you a list of English-speaking funeral directors and lawyers, and contact next of kin in the UK. They cannot pay any costs.

If a tour operator was involved, they will often handle a lot of the local arrangements on your behalf.

Registering the death locally

You must register the death with the authorities in the country where the person died. That country's death certificate is the primary document, and every later step depends on it.

Get several certified copies, and get a certified English translation of at least two of them. UK banks, pension providers and the probate service will ask for a translation they can rely on.

Registering the death in the UK as well

You can also register the death with the UK authorities through the FCDO's Overseas Registration Unit, for deaths on or after 1 January 1983. This is optional. It creates a record held by the General Register Office in the UK, and lets you order UK-style certificates later, which is useful if the estate takes years to wind up or if the foreign certificate is hard to replace.

You don't need to do it if you're bringing the person home to be buried or cremated in England or Wales, because the GRO records the burial or cremation anyway. There is a fee, set out on the FCDO's consular fees page.

Bringing the person home, or not

There are three options: a funeral in the country where they died, cremation abroad and bringing the ashes home, or repatriation of the body to the UK.

Repatriation is the most expensive by a distance, commonly several thousand pounds without insurance, because it involves an approved international funeral director, embalming to the destination country's standard, a zinc-lined coffin and air freight. Cremation abroad and returning the ashes is far cheaper but is irreversible, so make sure a coroner is not going to need the body first.

To bring a body into England or Wales you need the foreign death certificate, authorisation from the local authorities to remove the body, and a 'certificate of no liability to register' from the registrar in the district where the funeral will happen. If the death was violent, unnatural, sudden or of unknown cause, the coroner in England and Wales may open an inquest when the body is repatriated.

The UK admin afterwards

Once you have the certificates:

• Tell Us Once can usually still be used if the person normally lived in England, Scotland or Wales and was abroad temporarily
• UK banks, pensions and insurers will accept the foreign certificate with a certified translation
• Probate is applied for in the usual way if the person was domiciled in the UK
• If they lived abroad permanently, where they were domiciled decides which country's inheritance rules apply, and that needs advice