This is very good advice:
> Also contact a good estate lawyer. Who can often be the same as elder care lawyer. They’ll help you get a lot of the estate and also powers of attorney in order.
This has been worth every penny, because the laws are infuriating and boring. I need someone to wade through all that for me. My estate/elder lawyer helped me get power of attorney in order, and also explained how the will works, how it's saved in digital form, how often to get it refreshed, etc. She also knew the wrinkles of benefits my father gets because he's a military veteran -- there's no way I would've learned that stuff on my own.
Thanks, OP, for this thread and the work you're putting into this. This is a point on your checklist:
> Hire an accountant who can manage the finances, ideally including taxes, insurance, payments, bank accounts, benefits disbursements, retirement planning, and more.
My advice to anyone reading this is don't underestimate this point, and dig into it. There are finances that can be handled by a financial planner, but there's also really annoying swamps that a financial planner isn't as useful in, which I'm dealing with now -- e.g., financial distributions from a deceased spouse, that same deceased spouse's name being on a joint bank account. The various institutions can be really old-school and annoying to deal with: long wait times on the phone, inconsistent bureaucracy to prove you have power of attorney, insistence on talking to your parent, who might be slow and confused, etc. It has sometimes required I take a PTO day from work, because of how exhausting it is.