What Your Family Needs to Know When You're Gone
The practical details families scramble to find after a death, why they're rarely written down, and a calm 13-part way to organise them in one place.
Picture a kitchen table on a Tuesday afternoon. There is a cold cup of tea, a stack of unopened post, and a laptop that nobody knows the password to. Two adult children are sitting there, and they have been sitting there for most of the day.
Their dad died suddenly on Saturday. He was healthy, or seemed to be. He was the one who "handled all that stuff." And now the stuff needs handling, and nobody knows where any of it is.
Which bank did he use? Was there a second account? Is the car on finance? Who is the landlord's agent for the flat he rented out? What is the name of the woman who walks the dog on Wednesdays? Did he ever make a will, and if he did, which drawer, which solicitor, which town?
None of these questions are hard. Every single one of them had an answer, and the answer lived in exactly one place: his head.
This scene plays out somewhere in the world many thousands of times a day. Around 62 million people die every year, which works out to roughly two every second. You can watch that number tick upward on the live counter right now, and it is a strange thing to sit with. Every one of those numbers leaves behind a small group of people who suddenly have to piece a life back together from scraps.
This article is about the scraps. Not the grief, which nobody can organise for you, but the practical information that makes the first few weeks so much harder than they need to be. And it is about a fairly simple fix.
The numbers behind the kitchen table
Here is the scale of it, using the same figures that power the deaths today page:
| Time period | Approximate deaths worldwide |
|---|---|
| Per year | 62,000,000 |
| Per month | 5,170,000 |
| Per week | 1,190,000 |
| Per day | 170,000 |
| Per hour | 7,080 |
| Per minute | 118 |
| Per second | about 2 |
Most of these deaths are not sudden. The leading causes of death worldwide are chronic: heart disease, cancer, respiratory illness, dementia. But even an expected death tends to arrive at an unexpected moment, and a long illness rarely leaves the energy for paperwork. People mean to "sort everything out." Very few actually do.
And a meaningful share of deaths are genuinely sudden. A heart attack, a stroke, a road accident. In those cases there is no warning at all, and whatever was written down is all the family gets.
Most people have not written any of it down
The clearest signal of how unprepared most of us are is the humble will, the single most well-known planning document there is.
Surveys by Caring.com in the United States have repeatedly found that only around a quarter to a third of American adults have a will. In the UK, consumer surveys regularly find that roughly half of adults have not made one. And those are the people who have done the formal, legal part.
The informal part, the "where is everything" part, is even rarer. Even people who have a will often have nothing that tells their family:
- which banks and pension providers to contact
- where the house deeds or tenancy agreement are kept
- which subscriptions will keep charging a card for months
- what to do with the cat
- who should be told, and who should be told first
A will says who gets what. It almost never says where anything is.
Why the information is so scattered
It is worth understanding why this happens, because it is not laziness. It is how modern life is built.
Thirty years ago, a household's financial life lived in a filing cabinet. Bank statements arrived on paper. Insurance documents arrived on paper. If someone died, you opened the cabinet and worked through it.
Now most of that is paperless. Statements live behind logins. Policies arrive as PDF attachments in an email inbox that nobody else can open. Subscriptions are tied to a card on a phone. A typical adult might have relationships with dozens of companies, and the only complete list exists in their memory and their inbox.
| Then | Now |
|---|---|
| Paper statements in a drawer | Statements behind a banking app login |
| Insurance policy in a folder | Policy PDF somewhere in an email inbox |
| A handful of regular bills | Dozens of direct debits and app subscriptions |
| Photos in albums on a shelf | Photos across phones, cloud storage and social media |
| Address book by the phone | Contacts locked inside a phone |
| One pension from one employer | Several workplace pensions from several jobs |
That last row deserves a pause. People change jobs far more often than they used to, and each job can leave behind a small pension pot. If the person who earned them dies without leaving a list, finding them can take a long time, and some are never found at all. Government unclaimed property schemes in many countries hold very large sums for exactly this reason: money that belongs to someone, sitting quietly, because nobody knew to ask for it.
What families actually go looking for
If you talk to anyone who has handled things after a death, the same questions come up again and again. They tend to fall into a few clusters.
| What they need | Why it matters in the first weeks |
|---|---|
| Key documents (will, birth and marriage certificates, deeds) | Needed to register the death and begin any legal process |
| Bank, savings and pension providers | Accounts need to be notified and, eventually, closed or transferred |
| Insurance policies | Life and funeral cover can help with immediate costs |
| Regular bills and subscriptions | Otherwise they keep charging, sometimes for months |
| Property, vehicles and finance agreements | Someone has to keep paying, sell, or hand back |
| Employer or business details | Pay, benefits, death-in-service cover, and clients who need to be told |
| Digital accounts and devices | Photos, email and social media need to be found and managed |
| Pets and dependants | Someone has to care for them from day one |
| Funeral wishes | Decisions get made within days, often by people guessing |
| Who to tell | Friends, colleagues and organisations all need to hear, ideally not by accident |
Look down that list and notice something. Almost nothing on it is secret or complicated. It is mostly the names of companies and the locations of pieces of paper. The difficulty is not the information. It is that nobody wrote it down in one place.
The funeral wishes problem
One row in that table carries more emotional weight than the rest. Funeral decisions are made fast, usually within a few days, and often by people in shock.
Burial or cremation? Religious or not? A big gathering or a small one? A particular song, a particular reading, a particular place? Most people have opinions about this, and they very rarely share them. So their family guesses, and then wonders for years whether they guessed right.
A few lines written down calmly, years in advance, can save a lot of that second-guessing. It does not have to be morbid. It can be as simple as "something small, near the sea, please play this song, and no black ties."
The digital life problem
Our digital lives create a newer, trickier version of the same problem. Photos, emails, messages, cloud files, domain names, online businesses. A lot of what matters most to a family, especially photos, now lives behind a login.
The obvious instinct is to write down every password. Please do not. A notebook or document full of passwords is a security risk while you are alive, and it goes out of date every time you change one.
The better approach is to record where things are and how access is meant to happen, not the credentials themselves:
| Record this | Never record this |
|---|---|
| The name of your email provider | Your email password |
| That you use a password manager, and which one | Your password manager's master password |
| Which bank and what type of account | Account passwords, PINs or full card numbers |
| That you own a domain, and the registrar | Login details for the registrar |
| That you hold crypto, and where access instructions are kept | Seed phrases or private keys |
| Who holds sealed access instructions, such as a solicitor | Security questions or one-time codes |
Many big platforms also offer some form of legacy or inactive account setting, which lets you choose what happens to an account if you stop using it. Writing down that you have set these up, and for which accounts, is useful information for your family in itself.
Why people put it off
If this is all so simple and so useful, why do so few people do it? The reasons are very human.
It feels like tempting fate. Plenty of people have a quiet superstition that planning for death invites it. It does not, obviously, but the feeling is real.
It feels like a huge job. "Getting my affairs in order" sounds like a weekend of misery with a filing box. In practice, writing down where things are is much smaller than it sounds.
It feels unnecessary right now. If you are young and healthy, it seems like a problem for later. But "later" is exactly what nobody is promised. The death rate by age group is low in your twenties and thirties, but it is not zero, and accidents do not check your age first.
Nobody knows where to start. A blank page is intimidating. A structured set of prompts is not.
There is also a quietly positive side to doing this. Research on what psychologists call mortality salience, which we touched on in our piece about the Death Clock, suggests that thinking calmly about the end of life tends to make people reprioritise towards what matters: relationships, meaningful goals, gratitude. Filling in a planner like this is a small, practical version of that. Most people finish it feeling lighter, not heavier.
A calmer way to do it: When I'm Gone
This is the reason we made When I'm Gone: The Personal & Family Emergency Planner. It is a 42-page fillable PDF that walks you through all of the practical information your family may need, one section at a time, so the people you trust are not left reconstructing your life at a kitchen table.
It is deliberately calm. Navy, ivory and soft sage, not black borders and gloomy imagery. It reads more like a well-designed household organiser than anything to do with death, because that is really what it is.
What is inside
The planner is split into 13 sections, which mirror the questions families most often end up asking:
| # | Section | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | About Me | Basic personal details, so nothing has to be guessed |
| 02 | My Important People | Family, friends, and who should be trusted with what |
| 03 | Important Documents | Where each document is kept, not the documents themselves |
| 04 | Money & Financial Information | Accounts, banks and advisers, at a glance |
| 05 | Property & Assets | Property, vehicles, valued belongings and their paperwork |
| 06 | Bills & Commitments | Recurring payments and subscriptions, so nothing lapses by accident |
| 07 | Work & Business | Employer and self-employment details for anyone who needs to step in |
| 08 | My Digital Life | Accounts, devices and domains, without ever storing a password |
| 09 | Home, Pets & Practical Matters | The everyday running of the house and care for pets |
| 10 | People & Organisations to Notify | Who needs to know, and roughly in what order |
| 11 | My Personal Wishes | Funeral and memorial preferences, recorded well in advance |
| 12 | Messages & Memories | Traditions, memories and messages you want kept |
| 13 | Keeping This Planner Updated | A simple yearly prompt so it stays current |
How it works in practice
There are nearly 900 genuine fillable fields, so you can type straight into it on a computer using any PDF reader and save as you go. If you prefer pen and paper, it is designed to print cleanly on A4.
You do not need to do it in one sitting. Here is a realistic pace for most people:
| Session | Sections | Rough time |
|---|---|---|
| Evening one | About Me, My Important People, Important Documents | 45 to 60 minutes |
| Evening two | Money, Property & Assets, Bills & Commitments | 60 to 90 minutes |
| Evening three | Work & Business, My Digital Life, Home & Pets | 45 to 60 minutes |
| Evening four | People to Notify, Personal Wishes, Messages & Memories | 45 to 90 minutes |
| Once a year | Keeping This Planner Updated | 20 minutes |
Four evenings, spread over a month if you like. That is roughly the time most of us spend scrolling in a week.
Built around privacy
Every page follows one rule: record where information lives, never the secrets themselves. The planner never asks for online banking passwords, email passwords, PINs, full card numbers, security answers, one-time codes, password-manager master passwords, or crypto seed phrases. Instead it records the provider, the type of account, and where the real access instructions are kept, such as a password manager, a solicitor, or a sealed envelope with someone you trust.
Payment is handled entirely by Stripe on its own checkout page, so card details never touch our site, and the PDF is delivered through a payment-gated link rather than sitting on a public page.
What it is not
It is important to be clear about this. When I'm Gone is not a will and it is not a legal document. It does not give legal, financial, tax or estate-planning advice, and filling it in does not replace making legally valid documents where you live. If you have not made a will yet, our Will Calculator is a good starting point for thinking through what one needs to cover, and a qualified solicitor or lawyer can take it from there.
Think of it this way: a will tells your family what you want to happen. When I'm Gone tells them where everything is so they can actually make it happen.
| Will | When I'm Gone planner | |
|---|---|---|
| Legally binding | Yes, if made correctly | No |
| Says who inherits what | Yes | No |
| Lists where documents are kept | Rarely | Yes |
| Lists banks, bills and subscriptions | Rarely | Yes |
| Covers pets and household running | Rarely | Yes |
| Records funeral wishes | Sometimes | Yes |
| Covers digital life safely | Rarely | Yes |
| Easy to update yourself | No, usually needs formal changes | Yes, any time |
The two work best together.
Where to keep it once it is done
A completed planner contains private information, so where you keep it matters as much as what is in it.
| Option | Good for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Printed copy in a fire-safe box at home | Easy for family to find | Tell at least two people where the box and key are |
| Encrypted folder or password manager | Secure and easy to update | Someone must know how access works |
| Copy held by your solicitor alongside your will | Very secure, official | Harder to update often |
| Printed copy with a trusted family member | Instant access when needed | Only give it to someone you completely trust |
Whichever you choose, the most important step is the last one: tell the people you trust where it is. A perfectly completed planner that nobody can find is the same as no planner at all.
Starting small is fine
If the whole thing feels like too much today, start with just three things:
- Write down whether you have a will, and where it is.
- List the banks and pension providers you have accounts with. Just the names.
- Write down who should look after your pets or dependants, and tell that person.
That alone would have saved the two people at that kitchen table most of their Tuesday.
And if you want to do it properly, in a calm, structured way that covers everything from documents to digital accounts to the song you want played, When I'm Gone is available here for a one-time $7.99. It is a small evening project that could save the people you love weeks of searching.
While you were reading
This article takes around twelve minutes to read. In that time, roughly 1,400 people around the world have died, about 118 every minute. Each of them has left behind someone sitting at a table somewhere, trying to work out where everything is. You can watch the live counter and see the number move in real time.
Most of what those families are looking for is not complicated. It is just unwritten. A few quiet evenings now is one of the kindest things you can leave behind.
Data sources: Global death estimates based on WHO and UN World Population Prospects figures (approximately 62 million deaths per year), as used across the site. Will ownership figures reflect published consumer surveys by Caring.com (United States) and UK consumer research, and vary by year and methodology. When I'm Gone is a personal organisation workbook and is not a will, legal document, or source of legal, financial or estate-planning advice. For those decisions, speak to a qualified professional in your jurisdiction.
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