When a parent passes, the first question their children ask usually isn’t about money. It’s “where is everything?”
Where’s the will? Which bank? Was there life insurance? Is there a pension? What’s this automatic payment every month?
Most of those questions have easy answers, as long as the person who knows them is still the one answering. This guide shows you how to put it all on one page.
Why one page matters
Paperwork for most families lives in six places: a desk drawer, a filing cabinet, a safe, an email inbox, a phone, and someone’s memory. Each piece makes sense to the person who put it there. To an adult child going through it after a loss, it’s a scavenger hunt.
A single list doesn’t replace any of those documents. It tells your family they exist and where to find them.
What goes on the list
You don’t need account numbers or balances for most of this. You need the name of the company, what kind of account it is, and where the paperwork lives.
Personal information
- Full legal name, date and place of birth
- Social Security number location (not the number itself on a list that sits out)
- Parents’ full names, including mother’s maiden name
- Marriage and divorce records, and where they’re kept
- Military discharge papers (DD-214), if you served
The funeral home will need much of this for the death certificate.
Legal documents
- Will, and where the original is kept
- Trust, if any
- Financial power of attorney
- Georgia Advance Directive for Health Care
- The name of any attorney who helped you with them
If any of these are missing or out of date, see will vs. trust in Georgia for the questions to bring to an attorney.
Insurance
- Each life insurance policy: the company and where the policy is kept
- Burial or funeral insurance
- Medicare and any supplement or Medicare Advantage plan
- Homeowner’s and car insurance
Retirement accounts and pensions
- Each 401(k), 403(b) or IRA: the company that holds it
- Each pension: the former employer and the plan’s contact information
- Who is named as beneficiary on each, as far as you know
Beneficiary forms often control where these accounts go, regardless of the will. Our guide on why your beneficiary form matters more than your will explains why that matters.
Bank and other accounts
- Checking and savings accounts, by bank
- Any brokerage accounts
- A lockbox at a bank: which bank, and where the key is
- Credit cards, by company
Government benefits
- Social Security
- Veterans benefits
- Federal or state retirement (for example, OPM for former federal workers)
Property
- Home: where the deed is kept
- Vehicles: where the titles are kept
- Any land, timeshares or property in another state
Monthly bills and automatic payments
Go through two or three months of bank and credit card statements and list every recurring charge. Utilities, phone, internet, streaming services, subscriptions, memberships, charitable gifts. Your family will need to cancel or transfer each one.
Digital life
- Email accounts
- Online banking
- Phone and its passcode location
- Social media
For passwords, don’t write them on the list itself. Note where they’re kept, such as a password manager or a sealed envelope, and tell one trusted person.
People to call
- Attorney, accountant, financial professional, insurance agent
- Your doctor
- Your pre-planning arrangements, if you’ve made them
How to build it in an afternoon
- Start with your mail. For one month, set aside every statement that arrives. Each one is an account.
- Go through your bank statements. Recurring charges and transfers reveal accounts you forgot about.
- Open the filing cabinet. Pull out anything with a policy number or an account number and note what it is.
- Fill in the list by category. Use the headings above. Blank spots are fine. They tell you what to look for next.
- Tell someone where it is. A list nobody can find doesn’t help anyone.
- Update it once a year. Pick a date you’ll remember, like a birthday.
Keep it safe
This list is a map to everything you own, so treat it carefully.
- Keep it with your important papers, not taped to the refrigerator.
- Don’t put full account numbers, Social Security numbers or passwords on it.
- Don’t email it, and don’t type sensitive details into a website form.
- Tell your children it exists and where it is.
When you work with the Assist Program, we review your documents with you in person or through a secure upload your advisor provides, never by email or the website form.
Make it a conversation, not just a document
The best time to build this list is with your children in the room. They’ll know what questions to ask, and you’ll be there to answer them. It doesn’t have to be grim. Most families find it’s a relief.
If you’d like a starting point, our estate checklist is a one-page version of the categories above, with blanks to fill in.
How the Assist Program helps
Leaf Cremation has served more than 5,000 Georgia families, and we’re the ones at the table after a loss. We see how much harder everything is when nobody knows where anything is.
The Assist Program does this inventory with you. We sit down together, locate and organize your will, power of attorney, deeds, titles and policies, confirm your beneficiaries, and list your accounts, pensions and benefits. Your family gets one page they can act on. We keep it on file at Leaf, together with your arrangements. See how we get you organized.
When the time comes, a dedicated Family Care Advisor uses that file to claim benefits, close or transfer accounts and handle the paperwork for your family.
It pairs with burial insurance, a small whole life insurance policy that pays your family in days. Burial insurance answers “how will it be paid for?” The Assist Program answers “who handles everything else?” Read more about burial insurance.
Get help from the Assist Program
If you’d like help building your list, or a parent’s, leave your name and number below. Someone from the Assist Program will call you back.