My girl died rather suddenly and unexpectedly last month. I'm listed as her spouse/next of kin on her death certificate. What do I need to be able to access her accounts and close/take ownership of them?

If she has named you as a beneficiary at the account, all you should need to do is present a valid death certificate and your own identification to positively identify you as the beneficiary.

Does she have a will?  Do you have a power of attorney?  Does she have family/children?  Does she have creditors?  Have you consulted a probate attorney to help settle her estate?  I hope you can resolve this peacefully.

I'm sorry for your loss.

If you are listed as a joint owner on the account, you don’t need anything. If you are listed as a beneficiary, you need the death certificate. Doesn’t matter if you have a power-of-attorney as that died with her. If it’s an individual bank account only in her name, a probate court will need to be involved in order to allow access to the account.

She didn't really have anything, I handled money stuff and any income she had I handled.  She had no will or anything like that.  I need it for other, non traditional things I guess?  I'm not sure.  A coworker of mine went through the same issue when their brother passed leaving them as next of kin but no will.  

He mobile phone plan is still active, she has an Amazon account which has auto-pay for services (that I pay for), Google has limited resources for granting access to their member's data, but she had a lot of stuff backed up and I'd like to recover it if I could.  Things like that.

Unfortunately as she's just your girlfriend your powers are very limited. Anything that she has explicitly named you as a benefactor on you can get. Anything else would go to the next of kin. This is almost always a parent, child, or sibling. Without a will that would be handled by them after probate at their discretion.

Sorry I know I keep calling her my girlfriend, but I'm listed on the death cert as her common law husband, I'm not sure if that makes a difference.

It won’t help you on any account that is in her name only, but it could put you higher in the pecking order of “next of kin”. Accounts with beneficiary designations get settled with death certificate.  With no will, her estate will have to be settled at the direction of the  probate court. Last time I had to go through probate, Texas did not allow you to file directly with the court, but rather through a probate attorney. I don’t know if there is a small estate, expedited probate process. That’s a question for an attorney. If you want access to her accounts, you are going to go through probate.

A little, but as said yeah going to have to go through probate. Common law marriages don't do nearly as much as an officially recognized marriage.

I asked very similar question here 12 years ago, mine was directed more towards "what kind of attorney do I need?"  At this point I have to recommend you make an appointment with a probate attorney and while setting up the appointment, ask them for a written list of documentation they will need to get the work done.  You'll need several original copies of her death certificate.  The attorney knows the questions to ask.  Two huge differences though Becky did have a will, when she realized we weren't go to win the fight plus we declared and registered our informal marriage to the County Clerk.

It won't be cheap, it'll take a few weeks, and you'll have to go to court.

mm

ETA: Bartholomew Roberts, If you ever read this, Thanks bud