Holy cow, is this complicated!

Every now and then someone chides me for not having a will. I don't really see the need for one, since it would just say "everything to spouse unless we both die, then divide equally between children" and that's what happens anyway if you die without a will.

But I do see the need for an instruction book. It was hard enough dealing with my mother's estate, and she had everything planned out in advance and everything documented in paper files. Nowadays our lives are so full of online accounts and complicated bill paying mechanisms that it must be a nightmare trying to deal with a sudden death. And then there is all that STUFF that baby boomers have accumulated for our children to deal with after our death.

So today I started a project I've been meaning to do for a long time. I started writing up a Family Survival Guide for use in case of death or health emergency by whoever has to deal with it. Eventually I'd like to put it into a nice hardcopy format, but I started out with a Word document to capture the first things I thought of. It's already 5 pages long! The section on "Locating Assets" just keeps growing. So far it includes:

• Financial record books (a series of small spiral notebooks)


• Four filing cabinets and a fireproof filing box


• A shelf of 3-ring binders with financial statements by year


• Passwords to my iPhone and the password-keeper app on that iPhone


• Key files on my computer, ranging from notes files to a huge comics inventory spreadsheet


• Private page on my website with links to online accounts


• Google docs spreadsheets


• Broker's phone#

I've barely started the Online Accounts section. The resources listed above point to the most important ones for legal and financial purposes, but what about the 10 zillion others - social media, online subscriptions, email, my Ebay account? Which ones need to be closed, which ones should be updated to let my online friends know what's happened?

I wonder if anybody has come up with a good computer program or workbook for dealing with all this? And by "good" I mean one that is updated for modern life. I'm sure there are tons of out-of-date estate planners that never even mention passwords.