Set up a corporation or trust fund immediately after you win, or let your attorney claim the jackpot. (Sign a million notarized papers ensuring that the money is yours though)
0. TELL NO ONE. Continue daily routine.
1. Confirm that your ticket is the winning ticket.
2. Photocopy ticket.
3. Secure real ticket in bank safe deposit box. Arrange line of credit using ticket as collateral to cover set-up expanses. Continue to live, pay bills out of your current income.
4. Meet with an attorney. Set up a trust to handle all funds. Carefully choose trustees based upon proven wisdom, honesty, and loyalty.
5. Establish a business address, mailbox, e-mail account, and web presence for the trust. Make sure all are separate from your own personal accounts.
6. Inteview and select a management staff of professonals (MBA, CPA, CFP, tax attorney, etc.) to work for trust.
7. Redeem ticket. Park funds in 100% safe investments (Federally-guaranteed securities, etc.) until detailed investment decisions can be made.
8. Invest funds, structuring them to provide you and yours a steady income for life based upon capital gains from investments. Arrange for educations, philanthropic endowments, etc.
9. Retire all outstanding debts. Relocate to remote area with best security and tax advantages. Retain licensed security personnel to protect property and people.
10. All this done well, pick one lifelong dream, and use money to make it real.
If I hit the jackpot, I'd retire all my family's and closest friends' outstanding debts — but I'd do it directly, without giving anyone any cash. I'd also pay off our parish's outstanding debts and build a private Catholic school for the arts along with a small but lovely church and shrine here in Tarrant County. This church and its shrine would be a work of art constructed from the finest materials and built by the most talented artists, craftsmen, and engineers I could find. (The members of the senior class of the art school would be required to spend their senior year working as appentices to these craftsmen in order to graduate.) I'd also endow a free medical and dental clinic, a home for unwed mothers, a depression research chair at a local medical school, and an orphanage, and establish a scholarship at my high school.
And my lifetime dream? I'd buy two tickets to the moon, one for me, one for Mrs. Chan.