Introducing The Ready File

Most of us know roughly where the important things are. The will is somewhere in a drawer, probably. The pension provider is one of three possible companies. There's a life insurance policy from years ago that nobody has looked at since. It all lives in your head, and that feels fine, right up until the moment it doesn't.

Today we're launching The Ready File: a simple, fill-in-yourself document that puts everything your family would need to know in one place. It's not just for people who think of themselves as "getting on a bit." It's for anyone who has ever thought, even for a second, "if something happened to me tomorrow, would the people I leave behind know where to start?"

Why we built this

EstateCopilot exists to help executors and families through the practical work that follows a death: probate, inheritance tax, closing accounts, dealing with HMRC and the banks. We built the software after going through estate administration ourselves, and one thing came up again and again in that process and in conversations with the families we've since helped: the hardest part often isn't the paperwork itself. It's not knowing where to look.

Which bank did they use? Was there a pension from an old job? Did they want to be buried or cremated? Where on earth is the will? These aren't difficult questions. They're just questions nobody thought to write the answers to, because writing them down felt like something for "later."

The Ready File exists so that later never has to be a scramble.

What it actually is

The Ready File is a downloadable PDF, structured into clear sections of straightforward questions. You fill it in at your own pace, on your own computer or by hand once printed, and you update it whenever something changes. There's no software to learn and no account to set up. You buy it once, download it instantly, and it's yours to keep, edit, and print at home for as long as you need it.

Inside, it covers the kind of information that's genuinely useful in an emergency or after a death, including:

• Who to contact first, and in what order
• Where your will is kept, and who holds a copy
• Bank accounts, savings, and how to access them
• Pensions and investments, including old workplace schemes
• Property, mortgages, and any land or leases
• Insurance policies, from life cover to home and car insurance
• Digital accounts and passwords, from email to subscriptions
• Funeral wishes, so the people arranging it aren't guessing
• Pets, dependants, and anyone who needs ongoing care
• Debts, direct debits, and recurring payments that will need cancelling

Nothing about this is complicated. That's rather the point. Most of the stress families face after a death isn't caused by the questions being hard. It's caused by nobody having written the answers down while there was time to do it calmly.

This isn't just for older people

There's a quiet assumption that "getting your affairs in order" is something you do in your seventies, once retirement is well underway and the children are grown. It's an understandable assumption, and it's the wrong one.

Think about who actually needs a document like this most urgently: new parents, who suddenly have someone else entirely dependent on them and no time to think about anything beyond nappies and sleep schedules. People who've just bought a house, taken on a mortgage, and acquired a whole new set of accounts and policies to keep track of. Anyone who's gone self-employed, and now has business accounts, clients, and admin that only exist in their own head. People with a growing pile of digital accounts, subscriptions, and passwords that nobody else could ever guess.

None of these are "elderly person" situations. They're simply "adult with a life" situations, and they describe most people reading this. Something happening unexpectedly, an accident, a sudden illness, a difficult diagnosis, doesn't check anyone's age first. The families who've told us how much they wished they'd had something like this weren't all dealing with an elderly parent. Many were dealing with a partner, a sibling, or a friend who was nowhere near old, and who simply hadn't got round to writing anything down, because why would they have.

Filling in The Ready File isn't a morbid task. Most people who use it say it feels more like tidying a drawer than confronting anything frightening. You're not planning for the worst so much as making sure the people who love you aren't left guessing, whatever happens and whenever it happens.

How it works in practice

You don't need to finish it in one sitting. Most people fill in a section or two at a time, over a few evenings, and come back to update it when something changes, a new bank account, a change of address, a new pension. Some people fill it in together with a partner, so both of you know where things stand. Others treat it as something to hand to a parent or grandparent as a gift, framed not as "you're getting older" but as "I'd love to make sure I could help if you ever needed me to."

Once it's filled in, it's yours. Print it and keep it somewhere safe, like a filing cabinet or a fireproof box, and let the people who'd need it know where to find it. There's nothing to subscribe to and nothing that expires.

Where this fits alongside EstateCopilot

The Ready File and EstateCopilot solve two different sides of the same problem. EstateCopilot is there for the practical, often overwhelming work of administering an estate after someone has died, walking an executor through probate, inheritance tax, and every form HMCTS or the Sheriff Courts require, whichever part of the UK the estate is in. The Ready File is there before that moment, making sure the person left to sort things out isn't starting from zero.

If you're an executor right now, working out where to begin with a loved one's estate, EstateCopilot can guide you through the process itself. If you're not there yet, and you'd simply like to make sure your own family wouldn't be left guessing, The Ready File is a small, straightforward way to do that today.

You can download The Ready File now and start filling it in at your own pace. It takes less time than you'd think, and it's one of those tasks that feels better the moment it's done.