Doing your Death Admin
Life admin – it’s what smart phones were made for. Sitting on the bus or train or in a hospital waiting room. Waiting for one of your offspring to do their Judo/ballet/cubs – insert activity here. All these situations present opportunities to whip out your smart phone and get on with life admin. You can answer emails, pay bills, catch up on Facebook or do a spot of shopping.
But have you given any thought to doing your death admin? If you’ve got your Wills and Lasting Powers of Attorney in place well done. Give yourself a pat on the back. That’s an excellent start made on doing your death admin. But before you get all smug: there’s a lot more to think about.
What is death admin exactly?
Well – there’s the obvious: registering the death and organising the funeral. When someone dies it’s incumbent upon their surviving friends or family to deal with that. But there’s so much more.
Death admin is complex and time consuming so what this blog concerns itself with what you can do to ease the burden on your friends, family and your executors.
Where there’s a Will there’s a way
If you have already got a Will in place – how long ago was it that you had it drawn up? Time flies faster than you think – if a few years have passed ask yourself ‘does it need updating?’ To help you decide, check out my blog on five reasons to update your Will here. Make that your death admin starting point.
And if you don’t have either a Will or Lasting Powers of Attorney then do not pass go and do not collect £100 until you’ve done that. Find out more about Wills on my website here and LPAS here.
Ok. We’ve got Wills and LPAs in place. What’s next? Well … everything that will make the job of your executors as simple as possible when the time comes for them to administer your estate. So, in the first instance that’s gathering all your paperwork together in one place. This paperwork will comprise, first and foremost, your Will/s and LPAs. Hand in hand with those will be your funeral plans and any particular desires. You might, for instance, have a letter of wishes. You’ll need have it all in a handy place for your executor/s to access. And of course, your executors need to know where that handy place is!
Aside from your Will and LPAs, you must also include contact information for such people as your financial advisor, your accountant and your family solicitor if you have one.
Financial information
Your executor will need to know also what bank, savings and credit card accounts you have. Do you have some ancient premium bonds lurking in a drawer – you’ll need to dig those out. In similar vein, do you have any digital assets such as crypto currency? If so your executor needs to know.
Then there’s insurance: car, life, home and contents – and of course the mortgage if you have one. And not forgetting council tax.
Related to property, your executor will need a list of utility suppliers, including broadband, to contact.
What else need you consider? Are you a member of any professional organisations? Or lottery syndicate? If so then your executors will need that information so that they can get things shut down.
What’s your password?
We live in an online world. You’ll be managing much of what I’ve mentioned above online. And online means passwords and log-on details.
If you don’t do it already, now is the time to collect then all together in a digital password manager. There are several such things out there and here Google is your friend to help you find the right one for your needs.
Finally, while we’re talking about passwords: social media! It’s important that you gather together your login and password details for all your social media presences: Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn etc. In short, your entire digital footprint. None of it as vital as everything else we’ve mentioned but your executors will need to sort it out at some point.
If you have any questions or think you need help please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You’re welcome to call me on 07538946839 or email me at info@swindonwillwriting.co.uk.
Or, if you prefer, you can fill out my webform here.