How to Organise Your Affairs Before You Die: A UK Plan

Picture two families, each sitting at a kitchen table a week after a funeral. In the first, a daughter opens a folder labelled "For when I'm gone". Inside is a list of every account, a copy of the will, the name of the solicitor, a note about the pension from a job thirty years ago and a page of funeral wishes. She makes eleven phone calls that week and most of them are short.

In the second, a son is going through a shoebox of bank statements. He has found three pension providers so far, but he suspects there are more. He does not know if there is a will. He has spent two hours on hold to a bank that will not talk to him until he can prove he has the right to.

Both parents loved their children equally. The difference is a few weekends of organising. Around 1,800 people die in the UK every day, part of the roughly 170,000 deaths a day worldwide you can see on our live counter, and every one of them leaves behind a family who will end up at one of those two tables.

This guide is a practical plan for making sure yours is the first. It is not about death as such. It is about paperwork, decisions and conversations, done in an order that makes sense.

Why organising your affairs matters

Executors in England and Wales usually need a grant of probate before they can deal with larger accounts, sell property or close an estate. That process depends on finding out what the person owned and owed. When nothing is written down, the slowest part of probate is often simply working out what exists. We explain the legal process itself in probate explained.

What a family has to do after a death	Organised estate	Disorganised estate
Find the will	One phone call to the solicitor	Search the house, write to local solicitors, check will registers
Identify bank accounts	Read the list	Go through post and statements for months
Find pensions	Read the list	Use the Pension Tracing Service, chase old employers
Know funeral wishes	Read them	Guess, and sometimes argue
Cancel subscriptions and direct debits	Work through a list	Wait for them to appear on statements
Access photos and messages	Use the legacy contact set up in advance	Often impossible

Surveys regularly find that around half of UK adults have not made a will. Far fewer have written down where their accounts are, or what they want for their funeral.

The plan at a glance

You do not need to do this all at once. Spread it across a few weeks. The order matters, because each step makes the next one easier.

Step	What you do	Roughly how long
1. Take stock	List everything you own and owe	One or two evenings
2. Legal documents	Will, lasting powers of attorney, advance decision	A few weeks, including appointments
3. Simplify your money	Close dormant accounts, combine pensions where sensible, check nominations	A few hours spread out
4. Think about tax and gifts	Understand inheritance tax, keep a record of gifts	An evening, plus advice if needed
5. Sort your digital life	Legacy contacts, password manager emergency access	One evening
6. The home and belongings	Decide what matters, reduce clutter	Ongoing
7. Write down your wishes	Funeral, care, messages	An evening or two
8. Tell people	Talk to your executor and family	One conversation, sometimes several

Step 1: Take stock of everything

Start with a full inventory. It is not glamorous, but every later step depends on it.

What you own:

• Property: your home, any other property, the title number from HM Land Registry if you have it.
• Bank and building society accounts, including old ones you rarely use.
• Savings: ISAs, Premium Bonds, fixed-term bonds.
• Investments and shares, including old employee share schemes.
• Pensions, both workplace and personal.
• Life insurance and death-in-service benefits from work.
• Valuables: jewellery, art, collections, vehicles.
• Digital assets: crypto, domain names, online stores.

What you owe:

• Mortgage, loans, credit cards, overdrafts, car finance, buy now pay later.

Old pensions are the asset people most often forget. The Pensions Policy Institute estimated in 2024 that there are about 3.3 million lost pension pots in the UK worth around £31.1 billion, mostly because people changed jobs and lost track. The GOV.UK Pension Tracing Service is free and can find contact details for old schemes. For dormant bank and building society accounts, the free My Lost Account service does the same.

Inventory column	Why it helps
Provider name	Your executor knows who to contact
Account or policy number (last 4 digits is often enough)	Speeds up the bank's search
Approximate value	Helps your executor judge whether probate or inheritance tax may apply
Joint or sole	Joint accounts usually pass straight to the surviving owner
Beneficiary or nomination	Pensions and some insurance pay out outside the will
Where the paperwork is	Saves the family a search

Do not write passwords in your inventory. Banks treat sharing them as a breach of their terms.

Step 2: Put the legal documents in place

Three documents do most of the legal work.

A will. It names who inherits, who your executors are and, if you have young children, who you want as guardians. Without one, the intestacy rules decide, and they ignore unmarried partners entirely. See how to write a will in the UK and what happens if you die without a will.

Lasting powers of attorney. There are two kinds in England and Wales: one for property and financial affairs, one for health and welfare. They let people you choose make decisions if you lose mental capacity. Organising your affairs is not only about death. A stroke or dementia diagnosis can leave your family unable to pay your bills without one. We explain the process in lasting power of attorney explained.

An advance decision. This records medical treatments you would refuse in future, and it is legally binding if it meets the requirements. See advance decisions and living wills.

Document	Covers	Takes effect	Where to start
Will	Who inherits after death	On death	Solicitor, will writer or a carefully followed DIY process
Property and financial LPA	Money and property decisions	Once registered, and with your consent while you have capacity	GOV.UK "Make, register or end a lasting power of attorney"
Health and welfare LPA	Care and medical decisions	Only if you lose capacity	Same GOV.UK service
Advance decision	Refusing specific treatments	If you lose capacity	Your GP and the NHS guidance

Scotland and Northern Ireland have different rules and names for some of these, so check the guidance for where you live.

Step 3: Simplify your money

The fewer accounts you have, the easier things are for whoever deals with them. Organising your affairs is a good moment to tidy.

• Close accounts you no longer use. Each one is another letter your executor has to write.
• Consider combining old pensions, but only after checking for valuable guarantees or protected benefits. Some older schemes have features you would lose by moving. Get regulated advice for larger pots. MoneyHelper, the free government-backed service, has guidance on this.
• Check your pension nominations. Most pensions pay death benefits according to an "expression of wish" form, not your will. If yours still names an ex-partner, the will cannot fix that.
• Check life insurance beneficiaries and whether the policy is written in trust, which can keep the payout outside your estate.
• Review joint accounts. Money in a joint account usually passes to the surviving owner automatically.

Asset	Usually passes by	What to check
Sole bank account	Your will (or intestacy)	That your will covers it
Joint bank account	Survivorship to the other owner	That this is what you want
Pension	Provider's discretion, guided by your expression of wish	That the nomination is up to date
Life insurance in trust	The trust, to named beneficiaries	That the trustees are still the right people
Jointly owned home (joint tenants)	Survivorship	Whether you hold it as joint tenants or tenants in common
Death-in-service benefit	Employer scheme rules and nomination	That HR has your current nomination

Many families are surprised to learn that a will does not control pensions, joint accounts or insurance in trust. That is why this step matters.

Step 4: Understand tax and keep a record of gifts

Most UK estates do not pay inheritance tax, but the ones that do can pay a lot, and from April 2027 most unused pensions are due to be counted in the estate too. We cover the full rules in inheritance tax explained.

The single most useful thing you can do now is keep a record of gifts. Gifts can fall out of the estate for inheritance tax purposes if you live for seven years after making them, but your executors have to report gifts made in the seven years before death. If nobody knows about them, that becomes guesswork.

Gift rule (GOV.UK)	What it means
Annual exemption	You can give away £3,000 a year in total without it being added to your estate
Small gifts	Gifts of up to £250 per person, to people who have not had another exemption from you that year
Wedding or civil partnership gifts	Limited amounts depending on your relationship
Regular gifts from income	Exempt if they come from surplus income and do not reduce your standard of living
Seven-year rule	Other gifts usually become exempt if you live seven years after making them

A simple table listing the date, the person, the amount and which exemption you think applies will save your executor a lot of work. If your estate might be near the thresholds, speak to a qualified adviser.

Step 5: Sort your digital life

A modern estate includes email, photos, social media, subscriptions and sometimes crypto. Families often lose irreplaceable photos because nobody can unlock a phone.

• Set up Legacy Contact on an iPhone, or Inactive Account Manager for a Google account.
• If you use a password manager, set up its emergency access feature for a trusted person.
• Decide what should happen to each social media account: memorialise or delete. See what happens to your social media when you die.
• List your subscriptions so they can be cancelled.
• If you hold crypto, make sure someone knows how recovery would work. Without the keys, it may be gone for good.

Step 6: The home and belongings

Clearing a house is one of the most draining jobs a family faces after a death. You can make it much lighter.

• Decide which items matter to which people and write it down. A will can include specific gifts, or you can leave a letter of wishes.
• Reduce what you do not need. Swedish death cleaning is a gentle, room by room approach.
• Note practical details: where the stopcock and fuse box are, the boiler service company, home insurance. Insurers often need to be told when a property is empty.
• Arrange for pets. Name who has agreed to take them.

We put together a full checklist for this kind of practical information in what to put in an emergency binder.

Step 7: Write down your wishes

Families say the hardest thing after a death is not paperwork but guessing. What music would she have wanted? Did he want to be buried or cremated? Write it down.

Wish	Why write it down
Burial or cremation	Families sometimes disagree, and this ends the argument
Religious, non-religious or no service	Avoids a funeral that does not feel like you
Music, readings, who speaks	Gives a grieving family something concrete to do
Budget	UK funerals cost thousands of pounds; see how much a funeral costs
Who to tell	Old friends and colleagues are often missed
Care wishes near the end	Where you would want to be, what matters to you
Messages or letters	Many families treasure these more than anything else

Our guide to planning your own funeral goes into detail, and what happens in the last days of life can help with thinking about care.

Step 8: Tell people

All of this is wasted if nobody knows it exists. Have one clear conversation with your executor and the person most likely to deal with an emergency. Tell them where the folder is, who your solicitor is, and what is in it. Some people find it easier to hand over a copy than to talk through every detail.

The conversation can be awkward. It usually goes better than people expect, and many families describe a sense of relief afterwards. Our article on the top regrets of the dying is a reminder that what people care about at the end is rarely money, and more often whether they said what mattered.

Common mistakes to avoid

Mistake	Why it causes problems
Keeping the only original will at home	It can be lost, damaged or never found
Writing passwords on paper with account details	Security risk, and banks treat it as a breach of terms
Forgetting old pensions	A share of the UK's £31.1 billion in lost pots belongs to people who meant to deal with it
Never updating pension nominations	Money can go to an ex-partner or the wrong person
Doing it once and never again	Accounts, health and family change
Not telling anyone	A perfect folder nobody can find is no help

Keeping it all in one place

The final step is to bring everything together in one document your family can read. You can build your own with a ring binder and dividers, or use a ready-made template. The When I'm Gone planner is a fill-in PDF with sections for documents, money, the home, funeral wishes and personal messages, designed to be the single place your family opens first. Whatever you use, date it, store it safely and review it once a year.

If you want a reason to start this week rather than one day, our Death Clock gives a statistical estimate of the time you might have left. For most people it is a large number. The point is not to frighten, but to remind you that "one day" needs a date.

While you were reading

In the thirteen minutes or so it took to read this, around 1,500 people died around the world, about 16 of them in the UK. For many of their families, the next few months will be spent searching for paperwork, chasing pensions and guessing at wishes. You can watch that number climb on our live death counter.

You cannot control when your own day comes. You can decide which kitchen table your family sits at. Start with step one tonight: a single list of what you own and owe. If it helps, When I'm Gone gives you the pages to fill in.

Sources: GOV.UK guidance on wills, lasting powers of attorney, probate, inheritance tax gifts and the Pension Tracing Service; MoneyHelper; My Lost Account; Pensions Policy Institute, Lost Pensions 2024 (Briefing Note 138); NHS guidance on advance decisions; Office for National Statistics death registrations. This article is general information, not legal or financial advice. Rules differ in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and you should speak to a qualified professional about your own circumstances.