Family Binder & Beneficiary Checklist

Every hard scenario — a hospital stay, a death, a house fire — is ten times harder without a list of where things are. This is that list, on one printable page, designed to be filled in with a pen at a kitchen table.

What This Workbook Does

• Accounts and institutions, recorded as locations rather than balances.
• Insurance policies, including the old ones from a former employer that nobody remembers.
• Estate documents and where the originals physically live.
• Digital access — password manager, phone passcode, and the email address that receives every two-factor code.
• The professionals involved: attorney, CPA, adviser, primary-care physician.

How to Use It

1. Print it and fill it in with a pen. A binder that needs a laptop to open is a binder nobody opens.
2. Record where things are, not what is in them. It asks for location, not dollar figures, and that is what makes the conversation possible.
3. Do it alongside the person whose accounts they are, not about them.
4. Update it yearly on a fixed date — a birthday, a holiday, the week taxes are filed.
5. Tell at least one other person where the binder itself is.

What It Will Not Do

A binder is a map, not a legal instrument. It does not replace a will, a power of attorney or an up-to-date beneficiary designation — beneficiary forms override a will, and only the form itself can fix that.