"In Case of Death" Planning: A Practical Guide

A will answers who gets what. It doesn't answer where the will actually is, or who the executor should call first. It doesn't say how to access accounts that aren't part of the estate process on day one.

The gap between "we have a will" and "my family can actually act on it" is usually a missing index. That's a single place that points to every account, policy, and document, with enough detail to find the original.

That index doesn't need to contain sensitive numbers directly. Pointers to where things are kept are safer, and just as useful.

It's also worth being honest about why this stays undone. It's not a paperwork problem. It's a scheduling problem with your own mortality attached, and that's genuinely hard to put on a to-do list. Treating it as a one-hour questionnaire, rather than an open-ended "get your affairs in order" project, is usually what gets it finished.