Grief often brings a flood of paperwork most people aren’t prepared for. After losing her husband in a car accident, Sara Tashakorinia discovered the enormity of what needs doing—an average of 570 hours spent settling affairs after a loved one dies. Endless administrative tasks can compound the emotional strain.
Drawing on her own experience, Tashakorinia decided to lighten that load—not by erasing grief, but by automating everything else. The result is LumenUs, a new platform she launched to guide people through all the legal and financial tasks that follow a death. It’s not a counseling tool—it targets the parts of the process where systems are broken, information is lacking, and time is wasted.
How it works
After signing up, users answer detailed questions about their situation—what just happened, their emotional state, and their financial and legal context. With that input, LumenUs determines what needs to be done immediately and what can wait. The platform compiles tasks like finding the right tax forms, filing insurance claims, closing bank accounts, and more. Sometimes it even surfaces unclaimed benefits—such as life insurance payouts people don’t know exist.
Tasks are organized by urgency so that grieving people don’t have to decide what to tackle first. Behind the scenes, AI powers the automation, aiming to cut down the hours, confusion, and stress involved in navigating these uncharted administrative waters.
The team, timing, and launch
Tashakorinia built LumenUs with co-founders Sajad Mirzaei—who worked at Google and Box—and Larry Keeley, a specialist in innovation and design. Their backgrounds include consulting with clinicians and social workers to ensure practicality and emotional sensitivity. Tashakorinia’s experience in cybersecurity is helping protect the highly personal data users must share.
The startup was accepted into this year’s Startup Battlefield 200, an early-stage showcase of promising companies. LumenUs will roll out in early access in October. Its initial focus is the intense period right after someone dies—though it aims eventually to support people throughout the extended grieving process.
Why it matters: An estimated billions of dollars in life insurance go unclaimed each year, often because no one knows how to access them. And while death is inevitable, the administrative aftermath needn’t be a secondary trauma. LumenUs’s automation aims to reclaim that space for rest, reflection, and grief—not forms and claims.
What to watch: user data privacy will be under scrutiny. As LumenUs stores sensitive legal and financial information, its security practices must meet high ethical and legal standards. Also, whether the AI can truly adapt to different legal jurisdictions—especially internationally—will determine its usefulness at scale. But with proper safeguards, this platform could make a meaningful difference for people at one of life’s hardest moments.
