A “What My Family Should Know” book is a single organized place where you record every piece of practical information your family would need if you died or became incapacitated: account numbers, document locations, contacts, passwords, medical details, and your personal wishes. It is not a will, a trust, or a power of attorney, and it does not override any of them. It’s the companion to those documents. Families who struggle most after a death usually aren’t the ones missing an estate plan; they’re the ones who can’t find anything.
What follows is what belongs inside, section by section, along with the traps that catch people who try to put one together without a guide.
Start With the Boundary: What This Book Can’t Do
Your book cannot distribute assets, appoint a guardian, or override your estate plan. If the book says one thing and your will says another, the will controls. The same is true of beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance. You can write down funeral preferences, organ donation choices, or which grandchild should get a particular ring, and your family will almost certainly honor those wishes, but if you need any of it legally enforceable, it has to live in your actual estate planning documents.
People and Contact Information
Start with the household. Full legal names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers for everyone. Then build out the directory of people your family would need to reach in a crisis: attorney, financial advisor, accountant, insurance agents, doctors, and your employer’s HR department. Include phone numbers, emails, and addresses. Don’t assume your spouse knows your accountant’s name or that your adult children know which firm manages your investments.
For any veteran in the household, note the branch of service and where the DD-214 discharge paperwork is kept. Surviving family needs it to claim burial benefits, apply for VA survivor benefits, and verify service history. Next of kin can request copies from the National Archives at no charge, but it takes time, and having the original or a certified copy on hand saves weeks.1U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Request Your Military Service Records (Including DD214)
Record personal dates too: wedding anniversary, dates of divorce or remarriage, birthdays of close family. Trivial until someone else has to fill out a form on your behalf.
Financial Accounts, Debts, and Insurance
List every financial account you hold. Checking and savings. Brokerage. Retirement accounts, including 401(k)s, IRAs, Roth IRAs, and pensions. CDs, annuities, cryptocurrency. For each one, write down the institution, the account number, and a customer service phone number. Note whether the account is individual, joint, or carries a transfer-on-death designation.
Do the same for what you owe. Mortgage, auto loans, student loans, personal loans, home equity line of credit, credit cards. Include the monthly payment, approximate balance, and whether the loan carries any life insurance or credit protection that would pay it off at death. Creditors will come calling regardless; your family needs the full picture.
List every insurance policy you hold: life, health, homeowner’s or renter’s, auto, umbrella, long-term care, disability. Record the policy number, the carrier, your agent, and where the physical policy is stored. Life insurance proceeds aren’t paid automatically. Someone has to file a claim, and nobody files a claim for a policy they don’t know exists.
Close out this section with a short summary of regular income (salary, Social Security, pensions, rental income, dividends) and recurring expenses (mortgage, utilities, subscriptions, property taxes). This gives whoever steps in a working picture of the household’s cash flow during the months when they most need it.
Beneficiary Designations (Call These Out Separately)
People skip this, and it may be the single most important section. Beneficiary designations on life insurance, retirement accounts, annuities, and payable-on-death bank accounts override your will. It does not matter what your will says about who gets your 401(k). The person named as beneficiary on that account receives it. If the designation is out of date — an ex-spouse, a deceased parent — your family inherits a legal mess.
For every account with a beneficiary designation, record the current primary beneficiary and any contingent beneficiary. Accounts with no beneficiary named typically pass through your estate, which means probate. Treat this section of the book as a prompt to review and update those designations whenever your life changes.
Legal Documents and Where to Find Them
Your family needs more than knowing a will exists. They need to know which drawer, which safe, which attorney’s office. For each of these documents, record whether it exists, when it was last updated, and its exact physical location:
- Will or living trust, naming the executor or trustee and specifying distribution of assets.
- Financial power of attorney, authorizing someone to handle your finances while you’re alive and incapacitated.
- Healthcare power of attorney, naming someone to make medical decisions when you can’t speak for yourself.2HHS.gov. Personal Representatives
- Living will or advance directive, spelling out which treatments you do and don’t want (ventilation, tube feeding, resuscitation).
- Funeral or burial instructions, including burial versus cremation, any pre-paid arrangements, cemetery plot information, and religious preferences.
If you have a trust, write down the full legal name of the trust, the date it was established, the successor trustee, and which assets are actually titled in the trust’s name. Assets left outside the trust still go through probate, and this is a common and expensive oversight.
Medical Information and the HIPAA Problem
List current medications with dosage, prescribing doctor, and pharmacy. List allergies, chronic conditions, and any significant surgical history. Include contact information for every provider: primary care, specialists, dentist, therapist, pharmacy. Record your health insurance details, including carrier, policy number, group number, and member services phone number.
Then address the access problem. Even your spouse cannot automatically get your medical records. Under federal privacy law, a provider can only share your protected health information with a “personal representative” — someone with legal authority to make healthcare decisions on your behalf. That authority comes from a healthcare power of attorney, a court-appointed guardianship, or, for minor children, the parent-child relationship. If the representative’s authority is broad, providers must treat them as if they were you. If it’s limited to specific decisions, they get access only to information relevant to those decisions.2HHS.gov. Personal Representatives
The practical takeaway for your book: note exactly where the signed healthcare power of attorney is stored and who holds a copy. In an emergency room at 2 a.m., your family will need to produce it fast.
Digital Accounts and Passwords
List every online account that matters. Email. Banking and investment logins. Social media. Cloud storage. Streaming services. Domain names. Cryptocurrency wallets. Any digital storefront where you sell products. For each one, record the service, the username or email tied to it, and the two-factor authentication method you use, whether that’s an authenticator app, a phone number, or a hardware key.
Password Access
Writing passwords on paper and tucking them in a binder works, but only if the binder is physically secure, and it ages badly because passwords change. A better approach for most households is a password manager with an emergency access feature. You designate a trusted contact; after a waiting period you set in advance, that contact gets access to your vault automatically unless you reject the request. In the book, record which password manager you use, who the emergency contact is, and any master password recovery instructions. If you use the paper approach instead, keep the list in a fireproof safe and commit to updating it whenever a password changes.
What Happens to Accounts After Death
Most major platforms now have a process for accounts after death — a legacy contact, an inactive account manager, or a memorialization request. Nearly every state has adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, which gives executors and trustees legal authority to manage digital property. The law doesn’t hand over passwords; it gives fiduciaries the right to request access. Knowing which accounts exist and where the credentials live makes that process dramatically faster.
Household Operations
Record the location of property deeds, vehicle titles, and lease agreements. List utility providers (electric, gas, water, internet, phone) with account numbers. Note the alarm company and security codes, the HOA management company if there is one, and where the keys are kept — house, car, storage unit, mailbox, safe deposit box, outbuildings.
List any maintenance contracts and warranties (HVAC, pest control, appliances) with the company name and expiration date. Add the people who regularly service your property: plumber, electrician, lawn service, handyman. When someone else has to run your household overnight, these are the details that keep daily life functioning.
A Specific Warning About Safe Deposit Boxes
If you rent a safe deposit box, record the bank, branch address, box number, and where the key is kept. Then know this: accessing a safe deposit box after a death is rarely straightforward. Banks typically seal the box upon learning the renter has died, and opening it requires the executor to present letters testamentary or letters of administration from a probate court. A court order may be needed just to inventory the contents before an executor is formally appointed.
This is why most estate planners advise against storing the only copy of your will in a safe deposit box. If the will is locked inside and no one can open the box without probate, you’ve built a catch-22. Keep originals of your will and powers of attorney with your attorney or in a home fireproof safe, and note that location in your book.
Tax Records
Keep three to five years of federal and state tax returns in the book, or note exactly where they’re filed. Your executor will need them to file your final return and settle any outstanding tax obligations.
If your family can’t find your past returns, they can request a free tax return transcript from the IRS, which shows most line entries from the original return. They can also request a full copy by submitting Form 4506, which costs $30 per return.3Internal Revenue Service. Request for Copy of Tax Return Either way, they’ll need to supply your full name, last address, Social Security number, a copy of the death certificate, and either letters testamentary or a completed IRS Form 56 establishing their fiduciary relationship.4Internal Revenue Service. Request Deceased Person’s Information Form 56 is how an executor formally notifies the IRS that they’re authorized to act on a deceased taxpayer’s behalf; once filed, the IRS treats the fiduciary as the taxpayer for filing returns, receiving correspondence, and paying taxes owed.5Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 56
A First-Steps Checklist for Your Family
One of the most useful things in the whole book is a plain-language checklist of what to do in the first days and weeks. People who are grieving forget things, and the administrative load after a death is heavy. Customize this with your own account numbers and contacts already filled in:
- Order 10 to 15 certified death certificates. Banks, insurance companies, Social Security, credit bureaus, mortgage lenders, and the VA each want their own. The funeral home usually places the order; reordering later takes time.
- Report the death to Social Security. Funeral homes generally handle this, but if it doesn’t happen, call 1-800-772-1213.6Social Security Administration. What to Do When Someone Dies
- Apply for the Social Security lump-sum death payment of $255, which goes to a surviving spouse or qualifying children. The application must be submitted within two years of the death.7Social Security Administration. Lump-Sum Death Payment
- Contact life insurance companies. Claims aren’t paid automatically; each one requires the policy number and a certified death certificate.
- Notify banks and financial institutions to freeze accounts, prevent fraud, and begin transfers.
- Send a death certificate to Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Identity theft of the deceased is more common than people realize.8National Institute on Aging. What To Do After Someone Dies
- Locate the will and contact the attorney so the named executor can begin probate.
Choosing a Format
There is no single right format. What matters is that the book is organized, accessible, and something you’ll actually keep current.
A three-ring binder with tabbed dividers is the classic approach. Simple, no technology to troubleshoot, works in a power outage. Harder to update, and if it’s lost in a fire or flood, it’s gone.
A digital document, spreadsheet, or dedicated app on secure cloud storage is easier to maintain and keeps a version history. The risk is that your family needs to know the service, the login, and possibly a two-factor code just to open the file. Cloud storage without strong encryption is a security concern given what’s inside.
Most people land on a hybrid: a physical binder for original documents and printed reference sheets, plus a digital version for the information that changes often. The binder notes where the digital files live; the digital version holds scans of the physical documents. Each backs up the other.
Securing the Book and Who Should Know About It
This book contains everything a thief would need to steal your identity. Treat its security accordingly. A fireproof, waterproof home safe is the standard for the physical version. For digital files, use encrypted cloud storage with a strong unique password and multi-factor authentication.
At least two trusted people should know the book exists and how to access it: usually a spouse and one other person, such as an adult child, a sibling, or the named executor. They don’t need to read it now. They need to know it’s there and how to open it. If it’s in a safe, someone else needs the combination. If it’s in a cloud account, someone needs the credentials, or access through the password manager’s emergency contact feature.
Have the conversation directly. Telling your daughter, “there’s a binder in the fireproof safe in the basement closet, and the combination is taped inside my desk drawer,” takes thirty seconds and could save her weeks of searching.
When to Update It
A book accurate five years ago can be dangerously wrong today. Set a calendar reminder to review it at least once a year. Beyond that, certain events should trigger an immediate update:
- Marriage, divorce, or remarriage, which changes beneficiaries, powers of attorney, and emergency contacts.
- Birth or adoption of a child, which may require new guardian designations and beneficiary updates.
- Death of anyone named in your documents as executor, trustee, or beneficiary.
- Significant financial change: a home purchase, inheritance, business sale, or major loss of income.
- Moving to a new state, since estate planning laws vary and documents valid in one state may need updating in another.
- Opening or closing any financial account, credit card, or insurance policy.
The update itself isn’t a big project. Flip through each section, cross out what’s changed, write in what’s new. For digital versions, edit and save. The hardest part is remembering to do it, which is why the calendar reminder matters more than the format you picked.