A director's death ends two separate things at once: their role running the company, and, if they held shares, their stake in it. CAC only deals with the first.
The directorship ends immediately
A director's office ends on the date of death. No letter is needed. No board vote is needed either, unlike a resignation or a removal.
What the company still owes CAC is the paperwork. Someone has to record that the office has ended, on the same terms as any other change of directors.
This is easy to forget in the middle of a bereavement. Put the task on someone's list early, even if it is not the first thing on anyone's mind.
A fellow director or the company secretary is best placed to start this, rather than leaving it to the deceased director's family, who already have enough to manage.
Notifying CAC within the same filing deadline
The company must notify CAC within 14 days of the change. This is the same deadline that applies to a resignation or a removal.
CAC change of directors: the deadline covers that filing in full. Up-to-date annual returns and PSC information before CAC will process this change, exactly as it does for any other.
A death certificate is worth keeping with the company's own records, even if CAC's form does not ask you to attach one. It proves the date if anyone questions it later.
The deceased director's shares are a separate question
A directorship and a shareholding are two different things. Death ends the office. It does not make any shares the person held disappear.
Those shares pass to the estate. From there, they go to whoever inherits them, through probate or letters of administration. That process sits well outside CAC's change-of-directors filing, and it can take far longer to finish.
Do not let the share question hold up the CAC filing. File the change of directors on its own timeline, and deal with the shares separately.
A sole-director company faces a bigger gap
A company with only one director loses, for a period, the person who would normally sign off on the next steps. That includes the CAC filing itself.
This article cannot give a single rule for who steps in. It depends on the company's articles, its shareholders, and whether a company secretary already holds some authority.
This is exactly the kind of gap to raise with a lawyer straight away, not weeks later. Waiting only makes an already narrow gap harder to close.
Getting legal help for both processes at once
A death touches company law and succession law together: the CAC filing on one side, probate or letters of administration on the other.
A lawyer who handles both can keep the two moving side by side. The company does not need to wait for probate to finish before it starts the CAC notification.
Once the change of directors is filed, check the company's record on CAC's public search to confirm the update went through. See documents to change a company director for what the remaining board typically pulls together first. The CAC registration hub links the rest of this series.