This is the operational side: what to do, in what order, and what not to touch. The separate question of who pays for the cleanup is covered in our post on tenant deaths in Georgia rentals, because the answer there is longer and less satisfying than you would hope.
The first 48 hours
- If the unit has not been released by investigators, do not enter it and do not send anyone in. That includes your maintenance contractor.
- Secure the unit once it is released. Change nothing else.
- Find out who the executor or next of kin is. Until you know, you have nobody who can lawfully give you instructions about the contents.
- Notify your insurer. Not to claim yet — to open the file and get their position in writing.
- Arrange an assessment for the cleanup. Booking it is not the same as starting it.
The belongings are not yours
The tenant's possessions pass to their estate. They do not become abandoned property because the tenant died, and the fact that rent has stopped does not change it.
Clearing a unit before the estate has been identified and given the chance to collect is the single most expensive mistake available here. Photographs, documents, jewellery and small keepsakes are precisely the items families come back for, and precisely the items thrown out first.
- Do not clear, sell or dispose of anything before you have written authority from whoever represents the estate.
- Photograph the contents before any cleanup begins. This protects you as much as them.
- Where contaminated items must be removed for health reasons, that is a different decision — but it should be documented, and the family should be told what was removed and why.
- Ask the cleanup crew what they can recover. Items in closed drawers and wardrobes are often unaffected even in a badly contaminated room.
Two things widely believed, and untrue in Georgia
First, there is no general Georgia statute that terminates a residential lease when a tenant dies. It is repeated confidently online and it is not there. What happens to the tenancy depends on the lease and on the estate, and it is a question for a lawyer rather than for a blog.
Second, Georgia's stigmatised-property provision is written for property transactions, not for rentals, and it does not use the word landlord at all. If you have been told you must — or must not — disclose a death to your next tenant on the basis of that statute, check it before relying on it.
Before you re-rent
Get a written record of what was removed, what was decontaminated and where the regulated waste went. You will want it for three audiences: your insurer, the estate if there is any dispute about the unit's condition, and any future tenant or their attorney who asks what was done.
A remediation record is a categorically better answer to that question than a decorator's invoice, and it is the difference between saying the unit was cleaned and being able to show it was made safe.
One legal point specific to who you hire
In Georgia, a homicide, a suicide or a death involving advanced decomposition is a trauma scene in law, and only a practitioner registered with the Secretary of State may do that work. An unregistered operator cannot lawfully recover the cost from the property owner — which for a landlord means an invoice you may not have owed, and a cleanup you may have to explain later.
Ask for the registration number before anyone starts, not after the invoice arrives.
And the part that is not procedural
Somebody died in a place you own, and there is usually a family involved who are having the worst week of their lives. The order above is about protecting yourself properly, which is legitimate and necessary. It works better when it does not read to them as the only thing happening.
The work itself: Unattended death cleanup.
