Picture your kitchen table on the worst Tuesday of your family’s life. Someone is on hold with an insurance company they are not sure you had. Someone else is guessing at your phone passcode. There is a folder somewhere with the will in it, and nobody knows which drawer.

None of that is about money. It is about a list that never got written down.

The planner below is that list. Print it, fill in what you already know, and add the rest over the next week as you find it.

⏱️ If You Only Do Three Things, Do These

The full planner takes about half an hour. If that is not happening today, these three cover most of what makes the first week hard.

1. Write down where the will is. Not what it says. Where the original physically lives, and who holds a copy. A will nobody can find is the same as no will.
2. List every insurance policy. Company and policy number is enough. Employer life cover counts, and it is the one families miss, because no bill ever arrives for it.
3. Make sure someone can open your email. Your inbox is the master key. Everything else can be rebuilt from it.

📊 Why the First Week Is the Hard Part

Grief is not the difficult part administratively. The difficult part is that almost every institution wants proof, and proof lives in documents nobody can locate.

Every bank, insurer, pension provider, utility and subscription wants a certified death certificate and proof of who you are before they will talk to you. Order more copies than feels reasonable, because most institutions keep the one you send them.

This is not morbid. It is the difference between a family grieving and a family doing forensics.

📞 Who Needs Calling, and Who Can Actually Act

Two different lists. People who should be told, and people with the legal authority to do something. Most families only write down the first one.

💰 Where the Money Is, Including What You Forgot

Every account, especially the dormant ones. For each: the institution, the account number, and whether autopay is running. Autopay matters more than people expect, because subscriptions keep draining an account for months.

🛡️ The Policies Nobody Knows You Have

Insurance is usually the money that covers the immediate costs. Nobody claims on a policy they cannot find.

📜 Where the Documents Physically Are

What exists, and where it is. People always do the first half and skip the second. For each document, note the room, the drawer, the safe, or the attorney holding it.

🏥 What a Doctor Would Need in Ninety Seconds

This is the section most likely to be used while you are still alive. A hospital stay, an accident, a few weeks of incapacity.

💻 How Anyone Gets Into Your Digital Life

Locked accounts are one of the most common places families get stuck. Device passcode, then email, then everything else.

🕊️ Property, and What You Want to Happen

Anything with a title, a key, or a monthly fee. Property, vehicles, the safe deposit box, storage units. For the box, note who is authorized on the account, not just where the key is. Banks care about the authorization, and families discover this on the day they need the contents.

Then the heirlooms. Jewelry, art, collections, the things worth more in memory than money. Say who you want to have what. This is where families fall out, and it is entirely preventable.

And finally the part nobody wants to write. Burial or cremation. The kind of service, or none at all. Organ donation. Any pre-paid plan and its contract number. A few notes for whoever ends up writing the obituary, because they will be doing it in a fog.

✅ How to Actually Finish It

Nobody completes this in one sitting. Do not try.

1. Fill in what is already in your head. Contacts, bank names, insurance companies. The page stops looking blank, and that is most of the battle.
2. Collect the details over a week. Account numbers and policy documents surface as you go.
3. Store it properly. Fireproof safe, your attorney, or a secure vault. Not a desk drawer. We went through the options in where to safely store important family documents.
4. Tell two people it exists. A planner nobody knows about is a planner nobody uses.
5. Review it once a year. Pin it to your birthday or tax season.

One thing worth knowing before you start filing: not everything needs keeping forever, and some of it should be shredded. We covered the timelines in how long to keep a deceased person’s documents. And if you are reading this because someone has already died rather than to plan ahead, start with the what to do when someone dies checklist instead.

🔐 The Easier Way: Stop Maintaining Paper

A printed planner solves the “nobody knew” problem. It does not survive a fire, a house move, or a version from 2021 that nobody updated. And it still means someone has to drive to wherever the paper lives before they can do anything.

CareTabs holds the information and the actual documents in one encrypted place, with access already granted to the people who will need it. No filing cabinet. No guessing at passwords. No “I think Dad kept it in the desk.”