A “what my family needs to know” printable is a fill-in worksheet that gathers, in one place, every detail your family would need if you died, were hospitalized, or became unreachable: doctors and medications, account numbers and passwords, insurance policies, legal documents, funeral wishes, and even pet instructions. The pages themselves are simple. The work is sitting down and filling them in before anyone needs them.
What follows is what belongs in each section, why it matters, and how to store the finished document so the right people can actually find it.
Medical Information and Healthcare Directives
Open the organizer with a medical page for each family member: primary care doctor, specialists, pharmacy, allergies, current medications with dosages, and chronic conditions. Add health insurance policy numbers and the claims phone number from the back of each card. Family medical history is worth capturing too, since it helps future doctors screen for hereditary conditions.
Three healthcare documents do very different jobs, and your organizer should log where each one is stored and who already has a copy:
- A healthcare power of attorney (sometimes called a healthcare proxy) names someone to make medical decisions for you if you cannot communicate. It covers any medical decision, not just end-of-life care.
- A living will spells out your wishes about specific end-of-life treatments such as ventilators, feeding tubes, and resuscitation. It typically takes effect only once a doctor certifies a terminal condition or permanent unconsciousness.
- A HIPAA authorization lets healthcare providers share your medical records with people you designate. Without one, a hospital can legally refuse to tell your adult child anything about your condition. The form must identify who can receive the information, what information is covered, and when the authorization expires, among other required elements.1U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. Individuals’ Right Under HIPAA to Access Their Health Information
The HIPAA form and the healthcare power of attorney work together but are not interchangeable. One grants access to records; the other grants decision-making authority. You need both.
Legal Documents and Where to Find Them
Catalog every estate planning document you have, where the original is stored, which attorney prepared it, and the date of the most recent version.
Wills and Trusts
A will directs how your assets are distributed and, for parents, nominates a guardian for minor children. Naming a guardian in your will does not bypass the court; a judge still formally approves the appointment after your death. But the nomination carries real weight and reduces the chance of a custody fight between relatives. Without any nomination, the court picks a guardian on its own with limited information.
If you have a revocable living trust, list the trust name, the trustee, any successor trustees, and the location of the trust document. Trusts can avoid probate for the assets placed inside them, but only if you actually transferred those assets into the trust during your lifetime. Note that status on the printable too.
Powers of Attorney
A durable power of attorney for finances lets someone you choose manage your accounts, pay your bills, and handle your property if you become incapacitated. The word “durable” matters: it means the authority survives your incapacity. A standard power of attorney stops working the moment you can no longer make decisions, which is exactly when you need it most. Record the agent’s name, the date signed, and where the original is kept.
Safe Deposit Boxes
If you have a safe deposit box, list the bank, box number, and location of the key. When someone dies, the bank typically freezes the box until a court-appointed executor presents a death certificate and letters of administration. In many states, even a preliminary search for a will or burial instructions requires a court order. If your will is locked inside the box and no one knows the box exists, the whole process stalls before it starts. For the same reason, the organizer itself does not belong in the box.
Financial Accounts and Insurance
This is usually the longest section and the most consequential one if it goes missing. For every account, record the institution, account type, account number, and a contact phone number. Cover:
- Bank accounts: checking, savings, money market, certificates of deposit.
- Investment and retirement accounts: brokerage, 401(k), IRA, pension, annuity.
- Insurance policies: life, health, homeowners, auto, umbrella, long-term care, with the insurer’s claims line and the agent’s contact information.
- Debts: mortgages, car loans, student loans, personal loans, and credit cards with account numbers and due dates.
- Income sources: employers, Social Security, rental income, business interests, recurring payments.
- Recurring bills: utilities, subscriptions, property taxes, HOA dues, anything on autopay.
Federal privacy law generally prohibits financial institutions from sharing your nonpublic personal information with outsiders unless you consent or the requester is acting in a fiduciary capacity for you, such as an executor managing your estate.2Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, Title V, Subtitle A Disclosure of Nonpublic Personal Information Until legal authority is established, a detailed printable is often the only way your family even knows which institutions to contact.
Note where tax returns and supporting records live, and include contact information for your tax preparer or CPA.
Beneficiary Designations
This is where organizers earn their keep, because beneficiary designations override your will. If your will says “split everything equally among my three children” but your IRA names only your oldest child as beneficiary, the oldest child gets the entire IRA regardless of what the will says. Life insurance, 401(k)s, IRAs, annuities, and any payable-on-death or transfer-on-death account passes directly to the named beneficiary outside of probate.
List every account with a beneficiary designation, the current primary and contingent beneficiaries, and the date you last reviewed each one. Outdated designations are one of the most common estate planning mistakes: a former spouse still on a life insurance policy, a deceased parent still on a retirement account, a child added to one account but not others. Review these at least once a year and after any marriage, divorce, or birth.
Digital Accounts and Assets
Most people’s digital footprint is now large enough to be a genuine estate problem. Catalog email accounts, social media profiles, cloud storage, online banking, cryptocurrency wallets, digital photo libraries, domain names, and subscription services. For each, record the platform, username, and either the password or a reference to where it lives in a password manager.
Nearly every state has adopted some version of the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, which gives executors legal authority to manage a deceased person’s digital property. The law draws a sharp line, though. An executor can generally access files, domains, and digital currency, but cannot read the content of emails, text messages, or social media communications unless you specifically authorized that access in your will, trust, or power of attorney. Without express consent, the platform’s terms of service control, and most prohibit access.
The simplest workaround is the legacy tools major platforms already offer. Google’s Inactive Account Manager lets you designate trusted contacts who receive access after a period of inactivity you choose.3Google. Set Up Your Inactive Account Manager Apple’s Legacy Contact feature lets you name someone who can request your Apple account data after your death using an access key you generate in advance, along with a death certificate.4Apple. How to Add a Legacy Contact for Your Apple Account Facebook has a similar Legacy Contact option. Your organizer should note which platforms you have set up and which still need it.
Household and Everyday Details
This section covers the kind of information that seems trivial until nobody knows it: utility account numbers and provider names, alarm codes and the monitoring company’s number, the location of spare keys, Wi-Fi network name and password, and contacts for the plumber, electrician, lawn care, and HVAC technician.
For vehicles, list make, model, year, and VIN, and note where titles are stored. Do the same for real estate deeds. Birth certificates, passports, Social Security cards, marriage certificates, and divorce decrees all need locations documented. If you rent a storage unit, record the facility, access code, and what is inside.
Funeral Wishes and Final Arrangements
Funeral decisions made under time pressure and grief tend to be expensive ones. Families who don’t know the deceased person’s wishes often overspend out of guilt or uncertainty. State clearly whether you prefer burial or cremation, whether you want a religious service or a celebration of life, and any instructions about music, readings, or charitable donations in lieu of flowers.
The FTC’s Funeral Rule requires funeral homes to provide an itemized General Price List of every good and service they offer, and your family has the right to buy only the items they want rather than accept a bundled package.5Federal Trade Commission. The FTC Funeral Rule Writing that right into your organizer as a reminder can save your family real money.
If you have a prepaid funeral contract, record the funeral home, contract number, and what the contract covers. Prepaid arrangements can lock in prices, but protections vary by state, and the FBI has documented large-scale fraud schemes in which prepaid funeral funds were diverted rather than held in trust.6FBI. Prepaid Funeral Scam Your family needs to know the contract exists so they can verify the provider will honor it.
Pet Care Instructions
If you have pets, give them a page. All 50 states and the District of Columbia allow some form of pet trust, which sets aside money and names a caretaker. A trust only helps, though, if someone knows about it. Document each pet’s name, species, breed, age, veterinarian, dietary needs, medications, and behavioral quirks. Name the person who has agreed to take custody, and note whether a pet trust or other financial provision exists. Without a plan, pets often end up at shelters in the chaos after an owner’s death.
Where to Keep the Printable and Who Should Have Access
A completed organizer is only useful if the right people can find it. Store physical copies in a fire-resistant, waterproof safe or a secure binder at home, not in a safe deposit box; access to the box itself may require the very documents stored inside. Keep a backup with your attorney or at another secure location.
For digital versions, encrypted cloud storage or an encrypted USB drive works, but only if someone else knows the access credentials. A password manager can hold logins for every account, yet the organizer still has to record how to get into the password manager itself. That is the one password that may need to exist on paper.
Decide who gets access and tell them. Reasonable candidates include your spouse, your executor, the agent under your power of attorney, and an adult child. For medical information, give a copy of your HIPAA authorization to both your healthcare proxy and the people named on the form.
Review and update the printable at least once a year and after any major life event: marriage, divorce, a new child, a move, a job change, or the death of someone named in your documents. Outdated information can be worse than none if it sends your family chasing closed accounts or people who are no longer involved.
What Goes Wrong Without One
The consequences of leaving this information undocumented go beyond inconvenience. When someone dies without a will, state intestacy laws decide who inherits, and the results rarely match what the person would have chosen. A surviving spouse may have to share assets with parents or siblings depending on the state. Unmarried partners typically inherit nothing. Courts appoint guardians for minor children with little information about the deceased parent’s preferences.
Financial accounts that nobody knows about eventually go dormant. After a period of three to five years with no activity, depending on the state, banks and investment firms are required to turn the funds over to the state as unclaimed property.7HelpWithMyBank.gov. When Is a Deposit Account Considered Abandoned or Unclaimed Your family can reclaim the money, but the process is slow and requires proof of entitlement that may be hard to assemble without records.
Digital accounts without legacy settings or recorded credentials can become permanently inaccessible. Photos, documents, and communications stored only in the cloud may be lost entirely if no one can log in and the terms of service do not permit fiduciary access. Filling out a printable takes an afternoon. Reconstructing the same information after a crisis can take months, and some of it cannot be recovered at all.