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, plainly, 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, no reading of the will, because life insurance passes by beneficiary designation, 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 within the policy's first two years, the contestability window, the insurer is allowed to review the application before paying. 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. Honest 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.
Something to note: if no named beneficiary is alive when the insured dies, the benefit usually pays to the estate, which drags it through probate and possibly through creditors. That's the outcome the whole product is designed to avoid, and it's preventable with 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.