Could a Google doc of your financial affairs be the most caring thing you can do for the people you love?
Bank accounts, old work pensions, car loans – excavating all of this in the eventuality of your death can leave a mountain of admin for your loved ones.
That’s why every autumn, 45-year-old writer and ex-Goop alumni Elise Loehnen updates a simple Google document, shared with her husband and brother, with all of her boring but vital information.
“You want the people you love to be able to mourn without needing to hack into your email account,” says Loehnen. “You don’t want your partner or siblings guessing where you might have bank accounts.”
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She’s had first hand experience of the admin mountain a death can create. When her best friend and brother-in-law died suddenly, she stepped up to help, she tells readers of her Substack, Pulling the Thread.
“Anyone who has gone through this process will tell you that one of the sharpest cruelties of the immediate aftermath of death is the endless paperwork,” she says.
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In her case, this included cancelling her brother-in-law’s credit cards, plane tickets, ordering death certificates, unwinding subscriptions, gym memberships, tolls, parking tickets, and thinking about anything that might come in the post bearing his name.
This isn’t easy, and it’s a task made worse by not knowing the person’s passwords, email accounts or phone codes, she says.
“Planning for your death might feel weird, but it is one of the most loving and selfless things you can do for the people you will leave behind,” she says.
So, if you are living, it’s time to get organised.
Excavation frustration
Does your brother know you have a car loan, does your sister know about your life assurance policy? Even if you live with them, they may not have a clue.
After a death, a family will sometimes come to solicitor Jacquelyn Dunne’s practice with boxes of files.
“There can be a crate with reams and reams of bank statements and policy documents,” says Dunne. For a solicitor to sift through the contents takes time, and costs money, so she typically gives the bereaved a list of exactly what she needs.
When you die, probate is the first step in sorting out who gets what. But first, a solicitor, or other person making the probate application, needs to gather a lot of financial information to complete Revenue’s SA2 form.
“I need to gather the value of the estate at the date of death, so I need Iban numbers for all your bank accounts, credit union accounts, life insurance policies and any real estate you have,” says Dunne.
Unless you have left a specific record of all of this, locating it will be complicated and time consuming for those grieving.
In one case, nieces and nephews of a deceased uncle had no clue where he banked, says Dunne.
“We had to write letters to every bank in the locality to see if he had any accounts with them,” she says.
“That can really delay things. Where things are documented, it definitely makes it easier for the family members.”
If a solicitor is handling things, they will write to the specific institutions, to check these were the only accounts and ask them to provide account balances.
Once this is submitted to Revenue and they give the nod, the probate application can proceed.
It can take four to six months for the grant of probate to issue from the date the probate office receives the information. But if you haven’t left a record of your accounts and policies, it can be months more before the process can even get started.
Once given the grant of probate, banks will give the solicitor the money in the accounts to divide according to the will, if there is one.
Where amounts are under €35,000, Irish banks can generally release funds without the grant of probate.
If your loved ones are anxiously waiting to sell your house or car for example to settle your debts, to access cash to pay off bills, and especially if there is a discord among beneficiaries, every day of delay can make things harder.
Missed funds
Money, big and small, falls through the cracks when loved ones are left in the dark, says Dunne.
In one instance, a family member found an old bank statement during a clear out, months after the death. The account had been inactive for well over a decade, so the bank had made it dormant. A balance of more than €40,000 had been missed.
The grant of probate had to be amended, prolonging the admin for family.
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Dormant account laws mean banks can transfer funds in an account inactive for 15 years to a National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) fund. This money deemed unlikely ever to be reclaimed goes to good causes every year.
Unclaimed life assurance policies are considered dormant five years after maturing.
Your beneficiaries can retrieve this dormant money, but they may not know it exists.
Irish credit institutions, led by Bank of Ireland and AIB, had almost €623 million of unclaimed funds in dormant accounts as of the start of 2023. Life firms, spanning from Aviva Life to Zurich Life, had a further €161.8 million, according to the NTMA’s annual report.
This gives you an indication of just how much money in accounts and policies can go undetected after a death.
In another example in Dunne’s experience, an old untouched Special Saving Incentive Account (SSIA), visible only on the individual’s banking app and containing €7,500, was not visible to the tellers in the branch because it had been made dormant.
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“If the person dropped dead in the morning, that money would not have been discovered,” says Dunne.
Instances like this prompted her to set up TheJourney.ie, a folder in which to physically document such personal information, designed as a companion to a will. Her idea was to ease administrative burden on loved ones and minimise legal complication.
Online and overseas banks
If you have money in an online-only bank, like Revolut and Bunq, or have overseas bank accounts through platforms like Raisin, there is unlikely to be a breadcrumb trail of physical bank statements.
If you haven’t left a record of your computer, email, or banking app passwords, the search for online-only accounts is made difficult.
“Even if they are aware you have accounts with online-only banks, they may not know how to access the information,” says solicitor Susan Murphy of Makemywill.ie.
“Who can they talk to if there isn’t a physical branch?”
“Someone’s main bank account can be with an online-only bank. There isn’t a physical bank you can go into with a death certificate and say, ‘I’m the next of kin’. So it’s a big minefield,” says Murphy.
Revolut will only deal with bereavement cases via email, or an in-app chat function. Raisin provides a phone number in Ireland.
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“If you had a document there that was updated annually with these details, it makes it so much easier,” she says. “Everything is just there in front of them.”
If you’ve made a will, you can include a list of the financial institutions where you have money or policies with your solicitor. They are unlikely to want to hold more specific information like passwords however. Accounts and policies started after you made your will be missing unless you refresh your will.
Create your own record, make it secure and update it at least annually. Enable access to your executor or someone you trust, says Murphy.
Otherwise, families must become detectives.
“Solicitors charge differently, but some do time recording now and if there was more of this tedious work involved, that can increase the cost,” says Murphy.
Personal loans, overdrafts, credit cards
It likely falls to your next of kin to notify your bank of your death. Unless they know where you have a personal loan, overdraft or credit card, they will have legwork to do.
Once a bank is notified, your loans will be stopped and the money in your account will be used to repay them. Any credit cards will be stopped too. The bank will stop charging interest from the date of death.
If you had informally loaned money to someone, the debt may never be known about, or get repaid, if it isn’t recorded.
Once notified, the bank will stop all direct debits and standing orders in your sole name too. Your people will need to contact all the direct debit originators however – so if you use streaming services, have club and gym memberships, give to charities, and have insurance company direct debits for example, include these in your Google document.
“It’s a lot of phone calls to various providers, and speaking to various robots,” says Susan Murphy. “And if you are not the account holder [or you don’t have the account number], they don’t want to talk to you, that can be a nightmare,” she says.
Possessions
The worth of valuable possessions can go undiscovered if you haven’t recorded this, says Dunne.
She recalls a client who had an old Tag Heuer watch worth €12,000 and a ring worth nearly €20,000.
Items like these can end up with a house clearance company, in a charity shop, or they can be buried with you, unless loved ones are alerted to their value.
Your home insurance policy is certainly something you should document, says Dunne.
“If your house is vacant and no one has told the insurance company, they might not honour an insurance claim if it arises,” she says.
Digital accounts
Do you have photos and videos stored in the cloud? Then leave a record of this, says Susan Murphy.
“Leave instructions about what you want to happen to your social media accounts, do you want them taken down, deleted or memorialised? What do you want to happen to your Google photos, who should be allowed to access them? Ideally leave all these instructions in one place for your family,” she says.
A document with all of your personal information is extremely valuable. Keep it up to date, share it with someone you trust, but also keep it secure, she says.
Billions of dollars in Bitcoin are locked away due to forgotten passwords, misplaced recovery phrases and discarded hardware, blockchain analytics firm, Chainalysis estimated in 2020.
If someone inherits your computer, but not the password protecting your digital assets, this could be in store.
Get started
Unlike a will which means decisions about who gets what, this checklist may be a less freighted task.
And while this sort of personal housekeeping might seem morbid, it might, according to Elise Loehnen, “be the most loving thing you can do for the people you love”.
Here are six suggested areas where recorded information can be of assistance when you die:
1. Bank accounts, Post Office savings, Credit Union, prize bonds, online banks, foreign banks, credit cards, store cards, gift cards, crypto, safety deposit boxes, stock options
2. Life assurance, house insurance, car insurance, health insurance, income protection insurance, travel insurance, death in service benefits
3. Investment products, shares, pensions
4. PPS number, property tax ID, motor tax, passport number
5. Utility providers and account numbers, providers of broadband, mobile phone, satellite TV, streaming services, TV licence
6. Travel card, social welfare benefits, library card number, gym and sports club memberships, newspaper or health supplement subscriptions, storage unit details, charity direct debits, social media profiles
