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A register for the paperwork
that outlives the moment.

Seven areas, twenty-five plain questions, no urgency and no score to be ashamed of. Most people who complete this land somewhere in the middle — that is the ordinary result, not a failing one. What comes out the other end is a printable register: what's arranged, who holds it, and where it's kept.

Begin the check How this is scored
  • Not legal advice
  • Nothing leaves your browser
  • England & Wales, Scotland, US and other
  • Printable one-page register

The instrument

Before you begin

Set your jurisdiction and household so the wording below and the register that follows use the right terms. Everything is optional to answer, and nothing is sent anywhere — your answers live in this page and, if you copy the link, in the URL you copy.

Readiness 0/100 Not started 0/23

A child under 18 depends on you

Controls whether the guardianship clause counts toward your score.

Any of the following apply to your estate

This tool is a starting point, not a solicitor

It cannot and does not state the law that applies to you, and requirements differ by jurisdiction — a DIY will can fail entirely on a signing or witnessing formality that looks minor but is not. If any of the following apply, take the specifics to a qualified solicitor or attorney rather than relying on this checklist alone:

  • Property, including a share of one — jointly owned property can pass outside the will entirely, depending on how it is held.
  • A business, or a share in one — succession, valuation and continuity are rarely solved by a general will template.
  • A blended family — balancing a current partner against children from an earlier relationship is one of the most common sources of a contested estate.
  • A beneficiary who can't manage money alone — an outright gift may need a trust structure instead, to actually protect them.
  • Assets or family in more than one country — more than one country's succession law can apply at once, and they do not always agree.
The will itself

8 pts · An afternoon — gap

A valid, signed and witnessed will exists

A will only takes legal effect if it is signed and witnessed correctly for your jurisdiction. A drafted-but-unsigned document, or one witnessed by a beneficiary, can fail entirely on formality even when the wishes inside it are clear.

5 pts · A week or two — gap

It has been reviewed since your last major life change — marriage, divorce, a child, buying property, starting or selling a business

In England and Wales, marriage revokes an earlier will automatically unless that will was made in contemplation of it. Each of the events above can make an existing will say something you no longer intend, without you having done anything wrong.

5 pts · A week or two — gap

It covers your whole estate, including the residue — what's left after specific gifts

A will that lists specific gifts but has no residue clause leaves anything acquired afterwards, or simply overlooked, to be distributed as if there were no will at all for that portion.

4 pts · An afternoon — gap

The original signed document can be found without a search

Probate generally needs the original, not a photocopy. A will that exists but cannot be located in reasonable time functions, in practice, like no will at all while it stays lost.

People and roles

5 pts · An afternoon — gap

Executors are named, and they know it

An executor who is named but never told carries the role blind. They cannot prepare, and may only discover the responsibility during the death itself — the worst possible moment to learn a new job.

3 pts · A week or two — gap

A substitute executor is named in case the first cannot act

Executors predecease, decline, or become unable to serve. Without a substitute named in the will, a court appoints one — adding time and cost at the point your family can least absorb either.

4 pts · A week or two — gap

Guardians are named for any children under 18

Without a named guardian, the decision passes to a court, which can mean real uncertainty for a child at the worst possible time. Applies only if you declared a child under 18 above — if not, this does not affect your score.

4 pts · An afternoon — gap

Beneficiaries are clearly identified — full names, not just relationships

"My children" or "my nieces and nephews" can be genuinely ambiguous after a blended family, an estrangement, or simply the passage of time. Full legal names remove the argument before it starts.

Incapacity

5 pts · Needs a professional — gap

A Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) for property and financial affairs is in place

A will only governs what happens after death. If you lose capacity beforehand — through illness, injury or age — without this document, no one automatically has the legal authority to pay your bills, manage an account, or sell a property on your behalf.

5 pts · Needs a professional — gap

A Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) for health and welfare is in place

Without this document, decisions about your medical treatment during incapacity fall to whoever the law defaults to — which may not be the person you would have chosen, and may not match what you would have wanted.

3 pts · An afternoon — gap

The attorneys know where the documents are

An attorney who does not know a document exists, or where to find it, cannot act on it — which defeats the purpose of having arranged it at all.

3 pts · A week or two — gap

The documents are registered where your jurisdiction requires it

An LPA has no legal effect until it is registered with the Office of the Public Guardian — a signed but unregistered LPA cannot be used, including in an emergency.

The asset register

5 pts · A week or two — gap

A written list exists of accounts, policies, pensions, property and debts

Without a list, an executor's first task is discovery — working out what exists at all, often from paper post trickling in over months. Things genuinely get missed.

4 pts · An afternoon — gap

Pension and life-policy nominations are up to date and match the will

Pensions and many life policies pass outside a will, directly to whoever is named on the provider's own nomination form — frequently left unchanged for decades, including after a divorce or remarriage.

3 pts · Needs a professional — gap

Business succession is documented

A business interest without a documented succession plan can leave co-owners, staff and a surviving family negotiating control at the worst possible moment. Applies only if you declared a business above — if not, this does not affect your score.

3 pts · An afternoon — gap

Someone other than you knows the list exists

A perfect asset list that only you know about provides no benefit until it is found — and a list is far harder to find than a will, because no one is specifically looking for it.

Digital estate

4 pts · An afternoon — gap

A password manager or documented access route exists

Without one, an executor faces individual account-recovery processes with dozens of providers, each requiring proof of death and its own timeline — some of which take months.

3 pts · An afternoon — gap

Legacy contacts are set on the major platforms

Google, Apple and Facebook each offer a legacy-contact or memorialisation setting that lets a named person act on the account after death, without needing your password at all.

2 pts · A week or two — gap

Subscriptions and domains are documented

Recurring charges and owned domains keep running, silently, until someone notices — and a lapsed domain can take a family website or business email down with it.

3 pts · A week or two — gap

Photographs and records are not locked to a single device

A phone that is passcode-locked, encrypted, and never backed up can make years of photographs and documents genuinely unrecoverable — not merely inconvenient to reach.

Access and location

5 pts · An afternoon — gap

The executor knows where the documents physically are

Knowing a will exists is not the same as knowing where it is. This is the single most common gap: everything is arranged, and nobody can find any of it in time.

3 pts · A week or two — gap

They can be reached without a court order

A will held in a frozen safe-deposit box, or in a solicitor's file under a firm that has since closed, can require a court application just to retrieve the document that would have avoided one.

3 pts · An afternoon — gap

A trusted second person also knows

A single point of knowledge is a single point of failure. If the executor is unavailable or affected by the same event, a second person who knows the same information is the only backup route.

Wishes and tax

4 pts · An afternoon — gap

Funeral and organ-donation wishes are recorded

A will is often read after the funeral has already happened, so these wishes need to be recorded somewhere your family will actually see in time — not solely inside the will.

4 pts · Needs a professional — gap

Any inheritance or estate tax exposure has been looked at once by someone qualified

Thresholds, reliefs and rates change and vary by jurisdiction, so this tool states none of them. What matters is whether a qualified person has looked at your specific position at least once, and noted when it is due a refresh.

Schedule A — names and locations

Nothing here changes your score. It only fills in the register that follows, so it reads like a document someone could actually use rather than a set of abstractions. Leave anything blank you would rather not type into a browser.

Readiness, as things stand

0/100

Not started

Answer the clauses above. The figure updates as you go, and nothing you type is sent anywhere.

0 of 23 applicable checks answered

In order

The next five things

Ranked by how much they're worth, how big the gap is, and how much effort they take — the same arithmetic every time, shown in full below.

Answer a few clauses and the sequence appears here, highest-leverage first.

Schedule B

Who needs to know

Not a score — a list. The people who would need to be contacted, what each of them would need to find, and whether that's actually true today.

People who would need to be contacted, and what they would need to find
RoleNameWhat they'd need to findWhere

The document

The Estate Readiness Register

A printable one-page record: every area, its status, who holds the relevant document, and where it's kept. Fill in Schedule A above for the "held by" and "where" columns to mean something.

Estate Readiness Register

Reference —
Prepared —
Jurisdiction —

Readiness by area, with the person holding the relevant document and where it is kept
Clause Area Weight Score Status Held by Where kept
Prepared with the Estate Readiness Register at findablepractice.com — not legal advice.

Methodology

How this register is calculated

Published in full so you, or a solicitor you show it to, can check the working.

  1. 1

    Seven areas, weighted by consequence

    The will itself carries the most weight (22 of 100) because everything downstream depends on it existing and being valid. Wishes and tax carry the least (8) because they are real but rarely the difference between an estate working and an estate not working.

  2. 2

    Four answers, two of which mean the same thing on purpose

    Yes scores full marks, Partly scores half, and No and Not sure both score zero — because an unconfirmed arrangement cannot be relied on any more than a missing one can. Not sure is tracked separately throughout, so you can see exactly what to go and check rather than what to go and fix.

  3. 3

    Checks that don't apply to you don't count against you

    The guardianship check only counts if you declared a child under 18; business succession only counts if you declared a business. Each area's score is the percentage of its applicable checks answered well, scaled to that area's fixed weight — so the total is always out of exactly 100, whichever checks applied to you.

  4. 4

    The next five actions are ranked, not just listed

    Each applicable check's priority is its weight, multiplied by how much of it is missing, divided by how much effort it takes to fix. A cheap, high-weight, largely-missing item outranks an expensive one worth the same points — the same logic a sensible person would use by hand, done consistently across twenty-five items.

  5. 5

    The reference number is generated, not random

    It's derived from your answers and jurisdiction, so the same answers always produce the same reference — useful if you print the register, come back later, and want to confirm you're looking at the same version. It carries no personal information and nothing is stored anywhere.

What this tool does not do

  • It does not state the law. Requirements for a valid will, and the exact instrument for incapacity planning, differ by jurisdiction and change over time — this tool names the right instrument for England & Wales, Scotland and the US, and points elsewhere to a qualified local adviser, rather than describing the substantive rules.
  • It does not estimate tax. Inheritance and estate tax thresholds, reliefs and rates vary by jurisdiction and change; stating a number here would be more likely to mislead than help. The tax clause asks only whether a qualified person has reviewed your position once.
  • It does not replace a solicitor for complex estates. Property, a business, a blended family, a beneficiary who cannot manage money, or assets in more than one country each change the arithmetic in ways a general checklist cannot capture — see the advisory box above the clauses.

This tool provides general information and a structured self-assessment. It is not legal, tax or financial advice, and using it does not create a solicitor-client or attorney-client relationship of any kind. A DIY will can fail entirely on a signing or witnessing formality that looks minor but is not — if anything above raises a question, take it to a qualified solicitor or attorney rather than resolving it here.

Questions people ask before they arrange this

Do I need a will?

Yes, almost certainly, if you have anyone who depends on you, own property, or care who gets what. A will lets you choose your executor, your children's guardians, and your beneficiaries — without one, a fixed statutory formula decides for you, and it rarely matches what a family would actually have chosen. Very few adults are genuinely better off without one.

What happens if you die without a will?

Your estate is distributed under your jurisdiction's intestacy rules, not your own wishes — a fixed order of relatives, usually starting with a spouse and children, that generally excludes unmarried partners, stepchildren and close friends entirely. It is also slower and more expensive to administer, since someone must apply to a court to be appointed, rather than simply acting on instructions you already left.

What should be included in a will?

A valid will names an executor and a substitute, states who inherits specific gifts and the residue — everything left over — and appoints guardians for any children under 18. It must be signed and witnessed correctly for your jurisdiction to take effect at all. It should be reviewed after marriage, divorce, a new child, a property purchase or a business sale.

What is a power of attorney and do I need one?

A power of attorney lets someone you choose manage your finances or health decisions if you lose capacity to do so yourself, through illness, injury or age. A will only takes effect after death, so without a power of attorney, no one automatically has legal authority to act for you beforehand. Most adults with dependants, property or a business benefit from having one arranged.

Where should I keep my will?

Somewhere your executor can retrieve it without a court order — a solicitor's storage, a will registry, or a fireproof file at home — provided your executor actually knows the location. A will that exists but cannot be found in time functions, in practice, like no will at all. Tell your executor directly; do not leave them to guess or search.

How often should a will be reviewed?

After any major life change — marriage, divorce, a new child, buying or selling property, or starting or closing a business — and otherwise roughly every three to five years even if nothing obvious has changed. Marriage automatically revokes an earlier will in some jurisdictions, including England and Wales, unless that will was made in contemplation of the marriage.

Common follow-ups

Does anything I type into this page get sent anywhere?

No. This is a single JavaScript file running in your browser — there is no server call, no account and no storage. If you copy the result link, your answers are encoded in the URL itself, so treat that link the way you would treat the information in it.

Is this legal advice?

No. It is a structured self-assessment that names the right instrument for your jurisdiction and points you toward it — it does not state the law, does not draft anything, and does not replace a solicitor or attorney, particularly if property, a business, a blended family, a vulnerable beneficiary or cross-border assets are involved.

I don't have children. Do the guardianship questions still count?

No. Answer "No" to the household question above the clauses and the guardianship check is excluded from your score entirely — it neither helps nor hurts your figure. The same applies to business succession if you have no business interest.

Can I trust the readiness score, or is it just a guess?

It is exactly as good as your own answers — there is no external data checking them, because none exists for something this personal. The value is in the structure: twenty-five specific, concrete questions instead of one vague feeling that everything is "probably fine."

Why doesn't the tax question give me an actual number?

Because inheritance and estate tax thresholds, reliefs and rates change and vary by jurisdiction — sometimes by state or region within one country — and stating a figure here would go stale and could mislead. The question only checks whether a qualified person has looked at your position at all.

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