Nobody plans for the week after. But almost every family goes through the same one: a kitchen table, a laptop nobody can open, a drawer that might have the papers in it, and a growing list of people who need an answer today.
It is a hard week, and most of what makes it harder is simply not knowing where things are. That part can be fixed in an afternoon. These are the five things your family will look for first, and what to do about each.
1. The will, and where the original is
A will is the one document everyone knows to look for, and the one most often found as a photocopy, a draft, or a confident memory that there was one somewhere.
Write down three things: whether you have a will, the name of the solicitor or firm that holds the signed original, and where your own copy is. If you made one years ago and have not looked at it since, this is a good moment to read it again. Marriages, children, house moves and falling-outs all change what you would want it to say.
If you do not have one, say so plainly. Knowing there is nothing to search for saves a family weeks.
2. The phone and the computer
More and more of a life lives behind a lock screen: photos, messages, banking apps, the only copy of the address book. A phone nobody can open is one of the most common and most painful problems families describe.
You do not need to hand out every password. Write down how to get into the phone and the computer, and where the rest of the passwords are kept, whether that is a password manager, a notebook, or a sealed envelope. Then make sure one trusted person knows that this note exists and where to find it.
3. The accounts and the policies
Bank accounts, pensions, life insurance, the mortgage, the car, subscriptions that will keep charging a card. Your family will have to find each one, prove who they are to each one, and close or claim each one.
A single page helps more than anything else here: the name of each institution, what kind of account or policy it is, and roughly where the paperwork lives. Account numbers are useful but not essential. The list of who to contact is what saves the time.
Life insurance deserves a line of its own. Policies are only paid out when someone claims them, and a policy nobody knows about is a policy that quietly pays nobody.
4. What you want done
Burial or cremation. A particular place, a particular song, or no fuss at all. Who should be told first, and who should be left to hear it gently. Whether there is a plot, a prepaid plan, or a wish that has only ever been said out loud.
These are the decisions your family will be asked to make within days, usually while they are least able to think. A short note, even a few sentences, takes those decisions off their shoulders. It does not need to be formal. It needs to be found.
5. The words
The last thing on the list is the one people say they regret most: the things that went unsaid. A letter to a partner. A note to each child. The story behind the ring, or the recipe, or the reason you kept that old photograph.
There is never a right moment to write these while you are well, which is exactly why they so often do not get written. Pick a quiet hour, write one, and keep it with the rest. It will matter more than any of the other four.
Where to keep all of this
The common thread is not what to write down. Most people know. It is where to put it so that it is private now and found later.
A folder in a drawer works if the right person knows it is there. A solicitor works for the will. For the rest, it helps to have one place that stays sealed until it is needed, and then opens by itself for the people you chose. That is what Legacy Drawer was built for, and it is free for one sealed item and one person. However you do it, the goal is the same: a week that is only about missing you, and not about looking for things.