How to build an 'if I die tomorrow' file for your family

A solicitor once described the weeks after an unexpected death as "archaeological work". The family is grieving, and simultaneously digging through filing cabinets, email inboxes and kitchen drawers trying to reconstruct a financial life the deceased had kept entirely in his head. The will was found eventually. The pension, less so.

Most people intend to get organised. Very few do, because the task feels either morbid or impossibly large. It is neither. What your family needs is a single, findable file containing a finite set of things. This guide sets out what belongs in it.

The five categories your file needs to cover

Think of the file in five layers. Each layer answers a question your executor or next of kin will ask in the days and weeks after you die or lose capacity.

1. Legal documents. Start with the foundational paperwork: your will, any letter of wishes attached to it, and your Lasting Powers of Attorney (one for property and financial affairs, one for health and welfare). If these documents exist but your family cannot find them within an hour, they may as well not exist. Note the name and contact details of the solicitor who holds the originals. If your will is registered with the National Will Register, note that too.

2. Financial accounts and assets. List every bank account, ISA, investment account, pension and life insurance policy. You do not need to record balances, only enough for someone to identify the institution, the account type and the reference or policy number. Include workplace pensions from previous employers, which are frequently forgotten. If you own property, note the title number and where the deeds are held. A one-page summary is sufficient; your executor can gather the details once they know where to look.

3. Access and credentials. This is the category most people omit entirely, and the one that causes the most practical difficulty. Your family may need to access your email to receive correspondence from HMRC, pension providers or the probate registry. They may need to pause subscriptions, or retrieve documents stored in cloud services. Keep a record of the email addresses associated with financial accounts, and the password manager or method you use to store credentials. Store this information securely, not in a plain text document on an unlocked laptop. Consider a sealed envelope held by your solicitor, or a private vault with access instructions left separately.

4. Personal wishes. A will governs the distribution of your estate. It says very little about your funeral, your preferences for medical treatment if you lose capacity, or the things you want your children to know. A letter of wishes sits alongside the will and can say all of this. Separately, consider writing a brief document covering: preferred funeral arrangements (burial or cremation, religious or secular, any specific requests), your views on organ donation if not already registered, and any personal messages you want preserved. These do not need to be long. A few honest paragraphs are worth more than nothing.

5. People to contact. Compile a short list of the professionals your family will need to speak to: your solicitor, your accountant, your financial adviser, your insurer. Add personal contacts who should be informed promptly: a business partner, a trustee, a close friend who holds a key or a letter. Include the name of your GP. If you have children at school or in university, include the contacts there too. This list seems obvious until you are the person who needs it at eight in the morning while also fielding calls from three siblings.

Making it findable and keeping it current

A file that exists but cannot be found fails completely. Two people should know it exists and roughly where it is: the person most likely to be your executor, and one other. You do not need to share the contents, only the location.

The file itself can be physical, digital, or both. A sealed envelope with a solicitor is reliable but slow to update. A locked digital vault is easier to maintain, provided access can be granted to the right people at the right moment. Whatever format you choose, the access instructions must be stored separately from the contents themselves.

Review the file once a year. A good prompt is the anniversary of making your will, or the start of each tax year. The things that change most frequently are financial accounts (opened, closed, transferred) and professional contacts. Pension providers change their names after mergers; advisers retire. A file that was accurate three years ago may mislead rather than guide.

The goal is not a perfect document. It is a file that lets someone you love spend their first terrible weeks grieving, rather than searching.

Glenvault is built for exactly this kind of organised record-keeping: documents, account details, contacts and wishes held in one private, access-controlled place. You can begin at glenvault.com/signup.