I rented a building from a gentleman that was a political heavyweight in the area, and a very nice guy.
He had a fatal heart attack, not exactly unexpected.
His wife later told me that she stopped at the bank on the way home from the hospital after he died to collect his birth certificate and other papers she thought may be needed.
The safety deposit box was ALREADY SEALED BY THE STATE!!!
This was in Illinois the home of 'Paul SHOEBOXES Powell', the Secretary of State, who died and had about a million dollars cash in shoeboxes in his closet.
https://apnews.com/article/political-corruption-springfield-illinois-67b7c692a1858beac0b6d4524a84b527
I drove my elderly mother around town a couple of years ago and she kept pointing to banks where “Dad had Safety Deposit Boxes” - I didn’t pay much attention at the time.
When my mother died in 2019, I told my brother about this experience- he called every bank in town and not a one of them had a safety deposit box in either my mother or father’s name - father died in 1999.
My mother was sharp as a tack until the day she died - and we’ll always wonder about what happened to those boxes.