Nobody teaches families how to file a life insurance claim. So the first time most people learn is the week they can least absorb new information. Here's the whole process, start to finish, so you can file it away or hand it to someone who needs it.
Step one, contact the insurance company or the agent who sold the policy. Either can start the claim. Step two, each beneficiary fills out a short claim form. Step three, provide a certified copy of the death certificate, which the funeral home can order for you. Order several while you're at it, banks and other institutions will want their own. That's genuinely most of it. There's no court process and no reading of the will. Life insurance passes by beneficiary form, outside the estate.
Timelines are shorter than people fear. Once the paperwork is complete, payment typically arrives within a few weeks, and most states require insurers to pay interest if they drag their feet. Claims can slow down in a couple of specific cases. If the death happens in the policy's first two years, the insurer can review the application before paying. Those two years are called the contestability window. And if the age or other facts on the application were wrong, the benefit gets adjusted to what the premiums would have bought at the truth. Accurate applications make for fast claims.
Beneficiaries usually take the money as a lump sum, and the death benefit generally arrives free of income tax. I'm not a CPA, and large estates can involve other taxes, so ask a professional if the numbers are big. Some insurers offer installment options or an interest-bearing account instead of a check. Take your time choosing. There's no deadline pressure once the claim is approved, and no rule that grieving people must make financial decisions quickly.
If no named beneficiary is alive when the insured dies, the money usually goes to the estate. That drags it through probate, and possibly past creditors. The whole product is built to avoid that. It's prevented by a five-minute beneficiary checkup. While you're at it, make sure someone in your family knows each policy exists and where the paperwork lives. A policy nobody knows about pays nobody.