AfterLoss · Family Pack
What to leave for my family when I die, gathered into one printed pack
Your Family Pack is a printed A4 pack, generated from your own AfterLoss plan, that your family can pick up and use without needing your password, your phone, or you.
Most of the first weeks after a death are spent looking for things. Which bank held the savings, where the will is, who the solicitor was. None of that searching is difficult, and all of it lands on people who are grieving.
A PDF you can read now. No email address, no account.
What an in case of death document should contain
An in case of death document is one place that holds everything the people sorting out your affairs will have to go looking for. There is no official form for it, nothing has to be witnessed, and it carries no legal weight of its own. It is simply the answer to the question your family cannot ask you.
It comes down to four things, and a ring binder you assemble yourself holds them just as well as we do.
Where everything is
The will, the deeds, the certificates, the pension and insurance paperwork, any funeral plan, the spare keys, the safe and where its key is. Invisible to a family unless somebody wrote it down.
Who to tell, and who can help
Every bank, pension, insurer, utility, council and subscription, with its reference number. Then the real people: the solicitor, the executor, the neighbour with a key. Tell Us Once covers a good deal of the first list in one go, and most organisations will want a certified copy of the death certificate, so it helps to say that several are usually needed.
The details every organisation asks for
National Insurance and NHS numbers, date of birth, address, passport and driving licence numbers, council tax account. The same handful, asked for over and over, and none of them quick to find in someone else's paperwork.
What you would want, in your own words
Burial or cremation, the tone of the service, the music, who should speak, what happens afterwards. Written as wishes rather than instructions, so nobody feels they have failed you. A few lines saying why you put it together is usually the page a family keeps.
None of it has to be done today, or in one sitting. Write down what you already know and leave the rest blank. A Family Pack sets all four out as thirteen printed sections, in the order a family reads them.
See a filled-in pack
A complete Family Pack for a family who do not exist: Eleanor Margaret Hughes in Rutland, her daughter and executor Sarah, and her son Michael. Every name, number, reference and address in it is invented. In every other respect it is the real thing, printed exactly as a Family Pack prints.
Everything they will need, in one place.
A PDF, 21 pages. No email address, no account.
What is in the pack
Thirteen sections, in the order a family reads them. A pack starts at around thirteen pages and grows as the plan does; the example above runs to twenty-one.
| Section | What it does |
|---|---|
| Cover | Who prepared the pack, when it was last updated, and a write-in line for where it is kept. |
| Inside this pack | The contents, with real page numbers rather than a guess. |
| A letter to my family | An opening in the planner's own voice, then ruled space headed In my own words, for a handwritten note and a signature. |
| The first days | Four calm steps, starting with taking the time you need and asking the registrar about Tell Us Once. |
| Where everything is | Every document and where it lives, from the will and the deeds to the spare keys and the safe, with blank rows for the rest. |
| People who can help | The real people: name, role, phone, email, address, and what each of them already knows. |
| Key information and references | National Insurance and NHS numbers, date of birth, address, council tax account, and the rest of what gets asked for. |
| Useful national services | Tell Us Once, the Death Notification Service, the Bereavement Register and the Pension Tracing Service, with numbers checked against each service's own source. |
| Who to tell | Every bank, insurer and account, with its reference and how best to tell them. Then online accounts, with no passwords in them. |
| My wishes | Twenty-five wish fields across six groups. Anything unanswered prints as a ruled line to fill in by hand. |
| A checklist to tick off | One row per organisation and per national service, with a tick box and a date-done column. |
| Calls made, and notes | A ruled log for who they spoke to, when, and the reference they were given. |
| Back page | Prepared with AfterLoss, the date this copy was printed, and a pointer to afterloss.uk for whoever is holding it. |
Why paper, when the plan is online
Every digital planning tool, this one included, has the same honest problem: the family may not know the account exists. A plan nobody can find is not a plan. A pack in a drawer needs no password, no phone, no signal and no help from you.
Where it lives is your decision: a drawer, a shelf, or the hands of the person you have named as executor. It is drawn to be hole-punched, so it can join whatever the family already has. AfterLoss follows a download with one quiet line - tell someone you trust where it lives - and that sentence is the whole mechanism.
No passwords are printed in it. The online accounts page lists the service and the sign-in name, then prints this in the planner's own voice: "None of my passwords are written anywhere in this pack - each service has its own way of helping families."
How this compares with a blank template
Most people arriving here have already tried one of three things. Each of them works, and each has a limit worth saying out loud.
A blank workbook or a printed template.
Beautifully typeset empty boxes, printed and filled in with a pen. These are genuinely good documents, and they are the reason a great many families have anything written down at all. Their limit is structural rather than a fault: you fill them from memory, at a kitchen table, in one sitting. Six months later the pension has moved and the only fix is a pen, or copying the whole thing out again.
A folder of paperwork, or a note on the computer.
A folder is the traditional answer and better than nothing by a long way, but it cannot tell anyone what is missing from it, or which of the twelve envelopes the bank will ask about. A note on the computer is easy to update and easy to lose at exactly the wrong moment: behind a login nobody else has, it is not available on the day it is needed.
The Family Pack.
It starts from the plan you have already built, so it arrives with the answers in it, and it is generated fresh every time you download it. Where the plan holds nothing yet it prints a ruled write-in line rather than a placeholder, so it is a usable blank form on the day you sign up and a finished document a year later. You never have to start again.
None of that makes a blank workbook a poor choice. If you have one and it is up to date, you already have the thing that matters. Ours is for people who would rather answer the questions once and let the document keep up.
Designed to be printed and read
A print document first, for readers who are older, tired, or reading it in a difficult week.
- True A4, with a 22mm margin down the left, so it prints at full size and a hole punch does not eat the text.
- A printed tab rail down the outside edge of every interior page, labelled Contents, Start here, Finding things, Who to tell, and Wishes and notes.
- 12pt type, and nothing carried by colour alone, so a black-and-white printer loses nothing.
What the pack is not
A handover document with a narrow job. Some of these limits are deliberate choices rather than gaps.
- It is not legal advice, and the back page says so. For the legal work, the making a will guide and the estate planning checklist cover the options.
- Nothing arrives in the letterbox. It is a PDF you print at home, as many times as you like. There is no physical product and nothing to wait for.
- It is not a password store. Use a password manager for those, and tell the person who will need it how to reach it.
- It does not write your will or register a power of attorney. It records where the signed documents are kept; the lasting power of attorney guide covers registration itself.
- It cannot tell anyone that it exists. One conversation, with one person, is what turns it into a plan.
The pack is one output of a wider workspace. Planning Mode covers where the answers are kept and how the case passes to the person you name, and our wiki entry on the letter of wishes covers the document that sits alongside a will.
Frequently asked questions
Build the pack an answer at a time
Whatever you know today is enough for a first copy.