LumenUs uses AI to cut the 570 hours of post‑death paperwork

Sara Tashakorinia knows the problem personally. Her husband died in a car accident eight years ago, and she found herself buried in tax forms, insurance claims and bank accounts that needed closing.

She describes the experience as suddenly being named project manager of a project you never knew existed, with no information and no training. Looking back, she says the pain left her too lost to question why she’d been handed a stack of forms, or why a funeral home charged her what she calls a 300% markup on a casket.

After years of volunteering to help other families through the same process, she realized AI might help with the least human parts of it. She founded LumenUs last year.

LumenUs starts with an onboarding process. New users answer detailed questions about the legal and financial situation and about their own state of mind. Tashakorinia says the questions exist only to personalize the help, first to who the person is and then to what happened.

From there, the platform sorts every task by urgency. Some things have to happen in the first days. Others can safely wait weeks. Seeing that split clearly can take a lot of panic out of the process.

The AI is aimed at chores like closing a bank account, submitting an insurance claim or tracking down the correct tax form. The goal, she says, is to automate as much as possible and give that time back to the family. The company is clear that it isn’t trying to automate grief itself, only the admin around it.

One of the most practical benefits is finding money. Billions of dollars in life insurance benefits go unclaimed because beneficiaries don’t know a policy exists. By asking the right questions early, LumenUs says it can help some families discover payouts they’re entitled to.

You don’t need an app to start looking. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners runs a free Life Insurance Policy Locator. You enter details from the death certificate, such as the person’s legal name, date of birth, date of death and Social Security number, and participating insurers check their records. If you’re a beneficiary of a policy they find, the insurer contacts you directly. In Oklahoma alone, the state insurance department says the locator has helped residents find $260 million since 2017.

Be careful, though. Scammers know about unclaimed money too. On July 9, 2026, the Federal Trade Commission warned about fake letters claiming you can share in life insurance proceeds from a stranger with your last name. Real unclaimed property is handled by official state programs, not by letters from unknown law firms.

LumenUs asks families to share some of the most sensitive information there is: Social Security numbers, bank details, insurance policies and their emotional state. That makes security the first question to ask of any service like this.

Tashakorinia’s background is in cybersecurity, which should help. Her two co-founders bring different skills. Larry Keeley is a professor and entrepreneur who studies innovation, while Sajad Mirzaei previously worked as an engineer at Box and Google. The team is also testing the product with input from clinicians and social workers.

Before signing up for any grief or estate service, check how it stores your data, whether you can delete it, and whether it ever sells information to partners such as insurers or funeral homes.

For now, LumenUs focuses on the period right after a death, when the paperwork is heaviest. Tashakorinia hopes it will eventually support people through the longer grieving process as well.

The startup showcased its idea as part of the Startup Battlefield 200, a lineup of promising early-stage companies at the Disrupt conference in San Francisco in mid-October. It said it would open early access in October, so expect a limited rollout before any wider launch.

Even if you never use it, the idea behind LumenUs is a useful checklist: deal with the urgent items first, look hard for benefits you may be owed, and don’t let a pile of forms set the pace of your grief.