When someone dies, the days that follow are rarely what people imagine. While families expect to sit with grief, what they actually do is search. They search through email inboxes for insurance documents. They call banks trying to establish what accounts even exist. They scroll through phone contacts wondering who else needs to be told. They discover a gym membership that has been running for three years after the person stopped going.
This is not a legal problem. Wills and probate are important, but they don’t tell anyone where the mortgage statement is, what the broadband account number is, or which email address was used to set up the online banking. That information lives in your head, and when you die, it goes with you unless you have written it down.
A life admin checklist before death is the practical document your family will actually need in the first days and weeks. This guide explains what to include, what people most often forget, and how to organize it so it’s genuinely useful.
What “life admin” means in end-of-life planning
Life admin is the ordinary, unglamorous information that keeps daily life running. Bill due dates. Account passwords. Subscription providers. The name of your insurance broker. The number for the boiler service contract.
It’s distinct from legal documents, though the two belong together. Legal paperwork determines who gets what. Life admin determines whether anyone can function in the immediate aftermath. A will might take months to work through probate. A missing account number creates a problem on day two.
The phrase “get your affairs in order” is so vague it’s nearly useless. What it actually means, in practical terms, is this: leave behind enough information that one trusted person can notify who needs to be notified, access what needs to be accessed, stop what needs to be stopped, and pay for what needs to be paid. That’s life admin.
Why practical information is more urgent than you’d think
The legal process of settling an estate is important, but it unfolds over months. Life admin problems hit immediately.
Funeral costs often need to be covered before any estate is settled. Life insurance needs to be claimed, which requires knowing the policy exists. Bills don’t pause. Direct debits keep running. Two-factor authentication locks families out of email accounts, which means they can’t reset any other passwords, which means they can’t access anything.
The average person now has more than 100 online accounts. Almost none of them are documented anywhere. Add recurring payments, insurance policies from previous employers, pension contributions, and a scattering of paper documents across various drawers and offices, and the picture becomes clear: modern life is administratively complex in ways that create real problems for the people left behind.
Families often spend two to six months handling practical matters after a death, and significantly longer when information is scattered or missing. That’s not time spent grieving. That’s time spent on hold with utility companies.
The core areas of a life admin checklist
Key contacts and important people
This is the first thing anyone needs, and it’s often the last thing people think to document.
Your list should include: your employer’s HR department contact, your doctor’s name and practice, your attorney or estate planner, your accountant, your financial advisor, any insurance brokers, and the person you’d want to handle your funeral (or a note of your preferences if you’ve made them).
Include both phone numbers and email addresses. Don’t assume anyone has them memorized. If you have specific people you want notified before any general announcement is made, name them and include their contact details.
Bank accounts and financial overview
List every bank account you hold. Checking, savings, investment accounts, retirement accounts, joint accounts. For each one, include the name of the institution, the rough purpose of the account (where your salary lands, where bills are paid from), and how it can be identified.
You don’t need to include full account numbers in a document that might be seen by others, but you do need to give enough information that someone can locate each account and prove they need access to it. A financial snapshot, even a one-page summary, is something most families wish they had.
One specific thing to flag: if your bills are paid automatically from an account that isn’t your main one, say so. Families regularly discover overdue bills on accounts they didn’t know existed.
Household bills and recurring payments
Go through three months of bank statements and list every recurring charge. Utilities, mortgage or rent, council tax, subscriptions, memberships, insurance premiums, charity donations. For each one, note the provider, the rough monthly or annual amount, and whether it’s on direct debit or paid manually.
This list does two things. It lets your family know what needs to be paid and what can be canceled. And it stops money from quietly leaving an estate for months while no one realizes.
According to Citizens Advice, dealing with a deceased person’s bills and debts is one of the most common areas where families need practical guidance, and the starting point is always knowing what those bills are.
Insurance information
List every insurance policy you hold: life insurance, home and contents, car, any income protection or critical illness cover, and any group life insurance through your employer (this one is commonly forgotten).
For each policy, note the insurer’s name, the policy number, and roughly where the documentation is stored. A life insurance payout is often the money that covers funeral costs and immediate expenses, but a claim can only be made if the policy is found. Deadlines can apply.
If you’re unsure whether a previous employer provided life insurance cover, it’s worth checking. Many people hold policies they’ve half-forgotten about.
Property and home information
If you own your home, note where the deeds or title documentation are stored, who holds the mortgage, and where the home insurance documents are. If you rent, include your landlord or letting agent’s contact details, your lease reference number, and the date your rent is paid.
Also worth including: who services the boiler, where the fuse box and stopcock are, and any service agreements on appliances. These details are mundane, but they matter when someone is trying to manage a property they’re not familiar with.
Subscriptions and online services
Streaming services, cloud storage, software, news subscriptions, apps, online tools. These are easy to forget because many of them are small and auto-renewing. They’re also easy to miss on bank statements because the company name doesn’t always match what you call the service.
One family found 17 active subscriptions after a death, totaling over $80 a month, running across three different payment cards. Some had been running for years.
A simple list, even just names and approximate costs, makes this manageable.
Mobile phone and utility accounts
Note your mobile provider, your account number or the email address used to register, and whether your phone uses a PIN or biometric lock. Your phone is often the device that receives two-factor authentication codes. Without access to it, your family may be locked out of every other account.
For utilities, gas, electricity, water, broadband, include the provider name and account number. These are on your bills. Store one recent bill per provider if that’s the easiest approach.
Passwords, devices, and digital access
This is the area where most people’s planning falls short, and where the consequences are most immediate.
Your email account is the master key. Whoever has access to it can reset passwords for almost everything else. Without it, your family is locked out of most of your digital life.
There are two practical approaches. A password manager like Bitwarden or 1Password stores all your passwords in one place, protected by a single master password. If you use one, make sure at least one trusted person knows the master password and how to access the app. If you don’t use one, a written list in a sealed envelope, stored somewhere safe and known, is a reasonable alternative.
Don’t just leave passwords. Leave instructions. Note which email address is your primary one, whether two-factor authentication is enabled and on which device, and any backup codes you were given when you set it up. Note any cryptocurrency or digital assets separately, since these often require specific recovery phrases that can’t be reset.
Keep this document secure. Passwords should not appear in a will, which becomes a public document during probate.
Important paper documents and where they are stored
List where the following are kept: your will, any power of attorney documents, birth and marriage certificates, property deeds, pension documents, military records if applicable, and any important contracts or legal agreements.
Include the exact location. Not “somewhere in the study.” The specific drawer, folder, safe, or external location (attorney’s office, bank safe deposit box). An index page kept in an obvious place, like the top drawer of a desk, that points to where everything else is, is one of the most useful things you can leave behind.
What families most often struggle to find
Across the practical areas above, a few things come up repeatedly as the hardest to locate after a death.
The email password. Utility account numbers. A list of what financial accounts exist. Insurance policies, especially older ones. The will itself. The name of a pension provider from a job held decades ago. Any cryptocurrency holdings or digital assets.
AARP research on digital legacy planning consistently finds that digital assets and access are among the top challenges families face, and the problem is growing as more of everyday life moves online.
The other consistent finding is that families wish they had known who to call first. When there’s no clear contact list and no guidance on priorities, people make calls in the wrong order, duplicate effort, and miss deadlines on things that had time limits.
The mistakes that make this harder
Assuming family already knows. Your partner or adult children almost certainly don’t know about the insurance policy from your job ten years ago, the small savings account you opened separately, or the three streaming services billed to a credit card you rarely use. Write it down.
Keeping information in multiple places. Passwords in a phone’s notes app. Bank details in an old email thread. Policy documents in a filing cabinet no one else uses. Subscription charges on a credit card statement no one else reads. Scattered information is nearly as bad as no information. The goal is one place, or one document that points to everything else.
No one knowing who to contact first. The first 24 hours after a death involve a small number of urgent calls: the employer, close family, the funeral director, possibly an insurance company. If no one knows who those contacts are or in what order to reach them, the family will figure it out, but it takes time and adds stress.
How to organize this so it’s actually useful
The format matters less than the reliability. Some people use a dedicated notebook. Others create a password-protected document stored in a shared cloud folder. Some use a printed document in a sealed envelope alongside the will.
Whatever you choose, it needs to be findable, readable, and current. An old document with outdated passwords and a bank account you closed two years ago causes as many problems as no document at all.
Review it annually. A one-hour check every year, updating account details, removing closed accounts, adding new subscriptions, is enough to keep it accurate. Tell at least one trusted person that it exists and where it is. There’s no value in a document no one can locate.
How life admin fits into broader end-of-life planning
Legal documents, your will, power of attorney, advance directive, establish who makes decisions and who receives what. Life admin makes those decisions actionable. Without it, even a well-written will can’t prevent weeks of practical chaos.
The two belong together. If you’ve written a will, you’ve already done the harder thinking. Adding a life admin document takes a few hours and removes a significant burden from the people who will have to manage things without you.
GOV.UK’s guidance on what to do after someone dies lists a range of immediate practical steps that require exactly this kind of documented information. The Social Security Administration provides similar guidance for US families. In both cases, the advice assumes that someone has access to basic account and contact information. Life admin is what makes that possible.
What to do right now
- Write down every bank account you hold and which one your bills are paid from.
- List every recurring payment from the last three months of bank statements.
- Note where your will, insurance documents, and important certificates are stored.
- Create a contact list of the five people or organizations that would need to be called first.
- Choose a method for documenting passwords and make sure one trusted person can access it.
- Tell someone this document exists and where to find it.
None of this needs to be perfect to be useful. A document that’s 80 percent complete and findable is worth far more than a perfect one that never gets finished.