Planning for not being here! Death in other words

A recent family loss has suddenly brought home to me that very few of us effectively plan for not being here!

Lets assume you are an average Joe - with a partner and 2.n kids, may be a parent is still alive.

Now suddenly you are gone! You've died.
Your family are in a state of shock, bewilderment and bereaved.
Hopefully you have left a will.
But that is only a start.
Your bank accounts and credit cards are frozen.
Pension receipts will be stopped! So in the near term, money will be short.
Cars are not legally useable - in the short term - as they are in your name along with the insurance - which has now become invalid.

Yet, at the same time large funeral bills need to be incurred. Along with lots of letters to be written to organisations that they've never had to deal with before.

Do they know or know how to get to - passwords, account numbers, pin numbers, memorable words, mail and email addresses, telephone numbers, etc.
Who to contact for pensions, life insurance, mortgages, investments, ISA's, PEP's, etc.

Do they have access to joint accounts and their details?
Things that up to now you have always looked after.

Stop and think for a minute of all the things to be done at such a time.
It does not take long to come up with a long list.

How can you plan for this? In in order to reduce its impact on your family.
Start with a basic list of bank account details - codes, numbers, addresses.
During the year, add investments and pension details, as dividends are received or premiums paid out.
Give directions/details of the normal physical locations of items like keys, statements, policies, deeds, certificates. Include every day things as well as those deeds you put in the bottom of the box 25 years ago and have not been opened since!

All this sounds fairly easy to do - and it is when done in advance - BY YOU!

If you have complex affairs - investments, mortgages, share holdings, trusts etc., give a brief description of how it all hangs together and inter-relates and why you have structured it the way it is. You may have saved thousands in a complex structure. But all the savings could be eliminated by high legal fees trying to sort out and understand the situation you have created.

In to-days world the best place to create and hold this information is on a computer with Word, Excel or similar. Yet will your family know which file and directory path to access to get to all this information. So store a printed copy in a location that all family members know about.

As accounts are closed or become redundant, don't remove them from the list but note them as closed/redundant and give the date. Remember, Inheritance tax can go back 7 years.

Still think your family could handle the situation that your sudden departure has created? It may not be nice to thing of dieing, but do you really want to leave a lot of problems for your loved ones?

Start building that list and if you have spare funds put some in joint/single bank accounts that your partner/loved ones can get to when you have gone in order to tide them through those first weeks.