The One Page That Tells Your Family Where Everything Is

The most useful thing you can leave your family is not tucked inside your will and it is not money. It is a single page that tells them where everything is. When people ask what information to leave for their family when they die, they often picture something elaborate. It is far simpler than that: a plain list of the accounts, policies, pensions and documents that exist, and where to find each one, so that nobody has to hunt.

The reason this matters so much is a quiet fact about how death admin works. Almost every bank, insurer and pension provider has a bereavement process that is, on the whole, humane and workable — but it only starts when the family contacts them. Nobody can claim on a policy they never knew existed, or close an account they cannot find. The hunting, not the paperwork, is what turns a hard few months into an exhausting year. A good list removes the hunt.

Crucially, this page is a map, not a set of keys. You are recording that an account exists and where the paperwork lives — names and references — not passwords or PINs. Providers deal with the family through their own identity checks once they know who to ask, so what your family actually needs is to know who to ask.

Why families end up hunting

A generation ago, an executor could work through a bureau drawer and a pile of posted statements and reconstruct someone's financial life in an afternoon. That world has largely gone. Statements are paperless, accounts live behind apps, and a great deal of what a person owns leaves no paper trace at all.

App-only banks are the clearest example. There is no branch to walk into, no passbook and nothing in the post, so an account can be entirely invisible unless the family already knows it is there — a problem we set out in full in closing a Monzo, Starling or Revolut account after a death. The same goes for anything reached only through a phone. Photos, documents and the logins to everything else can sit behind a locked handset that, without preparation, is genuinely hard to open; our guide to getting into an iPhone and iCloud after the owner dies shows just how narrow the routes are. Writing down that these accounts exist is what stops them being lost.

What the page should list, and why each line matters

Work through your own affairs in this order. Against each entry, the point is not to explain everything, but to give the family enough to make one phone call to the right place.

Bank and savings accounts. The provider and a sort code or account reference for each. This is the backbone of the estate, and it tells the family which bereavement teams to contact. Include savings and cash ISAs held anywhere other than the main current account, because those are the ones most easily forgotten.

Mortgage, loans and credit cards. The lender and the account for each debt. Debts do not die with a person; they are paid from the estate, and the family needs to know what is owed and to whom before they can settle it or, in some cases, discover it is covered by insurance.

Pensions. The scheme name and, for a workplace pension, the employer it came from. This matters more than almost anything else on the list, because many pensions pay a survivor's income or a lump sum that is only released when the family claims — and a former employer's scheme from thirty years ago is exactly the kind of thing nobody remembers exists.

Life insurance and other protection policies. The insurer, the policy number, and one detail that changes everything: whether the policy is written in trust. A policy in trust generally pays the named beneficiaries directly and quickly, outside the estate and without waiting for probate; one that is not can be held up for months with everything else. If you are setting this page up and realise there is no cover to list at all, you can get life insurance quotes and put that right while you are thinking about it. Note the trust position for each policy you do have.

The will, and any trusts. Where the will is kept, and who drew it up. If there are trusts, name the trustees and where the trust deed is held. Trustees carry real responsibilities and often do not have a full picture of the assets involved, so a line pointing them to the paperwork saves a great deal of confusion — this is the part of the list most people leave out entirely.

Property. Where the deeds or the title details are, and who holds them. If a home is owned with someone else, a note of whether it is held jointly or as tenants in common tells the family in one line whether the share passes automatically or under the will.

Digital assets and subscriptions. Email accounts first, because they are the key to resetting almost everything else, then anything with money or memories attached. Photo and cloud storage, purchased media, airline points and loyalty balances all sit here. Some of these have real value and some are simply lost on death, and it helps to know which — our guides to what happens to a Kindle library and Amazon account and to Avios, air miles and holidays booked in a dead name explain where the line falls.

Who to tell at work, and any professional or membership bodies. A current employer needs telling both for any death-in-service benefit and to close things off, and it is easily overlooked in the fog of the first week.

An opportunity, not just a task. If you are married or in a civil partnership, note it, because a surviving spouse can claim an extra ISA allowance worth the value of your ISAs — an entitlement that is very widely missed, explained in claiming the ISA allowance a widow inherits. Recording that the ISAs exist is what lets your spouse claim it.

The passwords question

This is where good intentions cause harm, so be deliberate. Do not write passwords, PINs or memorable-word answers on the same page as the account list, and do not leave them in a drawer. A single sheet that pairs every account with its login is a gift to whoever finds it first, and it can invalidate the bank's own protections against fraud.

Handle access separately. A reputable password manager with an emergency-access feature lets a nominated person request your logins after a set delay, which is the cleanest modern option. Failing that, a sealed record kept with the will, or with a solicitor, keeps the keys apart from the map. Remember, too, that the family rarely needs your passwords at all — providers deal with an estate through death certificates and grants, not by logging in as the person who has died. Knowing the account exists is what unlocks the process; the password almost never is.

A letter of wishes is not a will

People often set out to write a "where everything is" page and end up wanting to say more — how the funeral should go, who should have a particular ring, how they hope guardians or trustees will act. That belongs in a letter of wishes, and it is worth understanding what one is and is not.

A letter of wishes sits alongside your will. It is not legally binding, and it cannot do a will's job: it does not decide who inherits, and it cannot appoint guardians or executors. What it does is guide the people who carry out your wishes — executors, trustees, guardians — on the things the will leaves to their discretion, and record the personal and practical requests a will is the wrong place for. Keep the two separate and consistent, because a letter of wishes that appears to contradict the will causes exactly the disputes it was meant to prevent. If you have no will at all, no letter can stand in for one, and the law decides everything instead.

Where to keep it, and who to tell

A perfect list helps no one if it cannot be found. Keep the page somewhere your family can reach without a court order or a locksmith — filed with the will at a solicitor's, in a home safe whose code someone else knows, or with the person you have named as executor. A list locked in a safe deposit box that only opens with a grant of probate defeats its own purpose.

Tell at least two people that the page exists and where it is, so a single accident or estrangement does not bury it. And review it once a year, because this is the kind of document that rots quietly: accounts close, providers merge, policies are replaced, and a reference that was right three years ago sends the family up a blind alley. A short annual check keeps it worth the paper it is on.

Why this matters even when your affairs feel simple

It is tempting to think none of this applies to a straightforward life. But "simple" is often where the sharpest surprises hide. If there is no valid will, the intestacy rules decide who inherits, and they do not always match what people assume — an unmarried partner can be left with nothing, and even a spouse does not automatically receive everything. We set out how that works in where the money goes when there is no spouse, no children and no will, and how the fixed sum a spouse receives under intestacy is now dwarfed by house prices in where the statutory legacy no longer buys the family home.

If you own or part-own a business, the stakes rise again, because the value your family could actually realise from it is rarely obvious and rarely quick — the question we examine in what your family would actually receive for the business. In all of these cases, the one page does the same job: it turns a frightening unknown into a set of phone calls someone can start making. You can find the practical side of that process in our guide to bereavement admin, assets and contracts.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

The list itself works identically wherever you live in the UK — the same accounts, policies and pensions need finding. What differs is the legal machinery it feeds into, and it is worth a short note so the family is not thrown by the terminology.

In Scotland, the grant that gives an executor authority over the estate is called confirmation rather than probate, obtained through the sheriff court, and the language around executors and inheritance differs from England and Wales throughout. In Northern Ireland, the grant process and some of the succession rules differ again. None of this changes what you should write down; if anything it strengthens the case for a clear page, because a family already navigating unfamiliar terms is helped most by not having to guess what exists in the first place.

Frequently asked questions

What should the page actually list?

Banks and savings providers with account references, mortgage and loan details, pensions with their scheme names, life policies with the insurer, the policy number and whether they are written in trust, where the will is kept and who drew it up, any trustees, the property paperwork, utilities and subscriptions, and who to tell at work. Record names and references, not passwords, because those are what let the family reach the right bereavement team.

Should I write down passwords?

Not on the same page, and not loose in a drawer. Use a password manager with emergency access set up, or a sealed record kept with the will or a solicitor, so the keys are separate from the map. In most cases the family does not need your passwords at all: providers deal with an estate through death certificates and grants, so knowing which accounts exist is what really matters.

Where should the page be kept?

Somewhere the family can reach without a court order: filed with the will at a solicitor's, in a home safe whose code someone else knows, or with your named executor. Tell at least two people where it is, so it cannot be lost with a single misfortune, and review it once a year, because account details and providers go out of date faster than people expect.