How to Make Sure Your Family Knows What You Own

Families often spend months after a death just finding out what existed. Which banks? Was there a second brokerage account? Is there gold in a safe deposit box, crypto on an exchange, a pension from an old employer? Money that nobody knows about can sit unclaimed for years.

Writing a will matters, and nothing here replaces one. But a will says who gets what. It rarely says where everything is, and it's often read weeks after it was needed.

Start with an inventory

The most useful thing you can leave is a current list of what you own and owe. For each item, write down:

• What it is: current account, ETF portfolio, pension, flat, car, gold coins, loan.
• Where it is: the bank or broker, the country, the physical location for anything you keep at home.
• Roughly how much it's worth: a recent figure is enough.
• Who to contact: the institution's name, and an adviser or lawyer if you have one.

Leave passwords out of this list. Your family won't need your online banking password; banks have processes for next of kin, and using a dead person's login can create legal problems. What they need is to know which institutions to contact.

The checklist

Go through these categories once. Most people find at least one thing they had forgotten.

1. Bank accounts, including old ones you rarely use
2. Brokerage and investment accounts, including app-based brokers
3. Pensions and retirement accounts, especially from previous jobs
4. Life insurance and other policies
5. Property and the mortgage on it
6. Vehicles
7. Physical gold, silver, cash or valuables at home or in a safe deposit box
8. Crypto: which exchange or wallet, and where the recovery details are kept
9. Money you've lent to people, and money you owe
10. Business shares or private investments

Keep it current without making it a chore

A list written once and put in a drawer goes stale quickly. Accounts close, new ones open, values change. The easiest way to keep it accurate is to make the inventory the same thing you already use to track your net worth. If you update your balances once a month anyway, your family list stays up to date for free.

Decide who can see it, and when

This is the hard part. You probably don't want your sibling looking at your finances today. But you want them to be able to if you can't answer.

There are a few common approaches:

• A sealed envelope with a lawyer or notary, updated once a year
• A shared document with someone you trust completely
• A tool with delayed access, where a trusted person can request access and gets it only if you don't respond

NetWorthy's trusted access works the third way. You name trusted email addresses. If one of them requests access, you can approve or deny it. If you don't reply within a week, the request is accepted automatically and they can see what you hold, where, and how much. Nothing is shared while you're able to say no.

What this does not do

A list of assets is not a will and doesn't transfer anything. Inheritance rules differ a lot between countries and, in some places, by religion. In some countries a will must meet strict formal rules to be valid. Talk to a lawyer or notary about the legal side. The inventory makes their job, and your family's, far easier.

A ten-minute first step

Open a note and write down every financial institution you have a relationship with. Just the names. Then add one line for anything physical. When you're ready to keep it current, you can add everything to NetWorthy and turn on trusted access.