A will, nominations and even a trust all assume one thing: that your family can find and identify what you owned. Astonishingly often, they can't. Accounts no one knew existed, insurance policies that never get claimed, demat holdings and digital assets that vanish — billions in "unclaimed" financial assets in India sit precisely because of this gap. Good estate organisation is the unglamorous step that makes everything else actually work. (General information, not legal advice.)
The core idea: a single, findable record
The goal is one master document — a map of your financial life — that a trusted person knows exists and can access when needed. Not passwords scattered in notebooks; a deliberate, maintained inventory. It should list:
- Bank accounts, FDs, and lockers (with branch details).
- Mutual fund folios, demat and trading accounts (and the CAS / registrar details).
- Insurance policies — life and health (with policy numbers and insurer).
- EPF / PPF / NPS accounts (UAN, PRAN).
- Property documents and where the originals are kept.
- Loans and liabilities, and any guarantees.
- Nominees recorded on each, and where the will is kept.
The point isn't to expose this to everyone — it's to ensure that someone you trust knows where the map is and how to use it when the time comes.
Audit your nominations — and align them with your will
Set aside an hour to check the nominee on every account, folio and policy. Common, painful errors: a nomination still pointing to a parent or an ex-spouse years later, or no nominee at all (which forces a slow succession process). Remember a nominee is a trustee, not the final owner — so your nominations and your will should be consistent, or you create exactly the disputes estate planning is meant to prevent (see our piece on nominations and transmission). SEBI now effectively requires nomination (or a conscious opt-out) for demat accounts and mutual funds — use it.
Don't forget your digital assets
A growing share of life — and value — is digital, and it's the easiest to lose because access dies with you:
- Financial-adjacent: demat and trading logins, UPI apps, payment wallets, and especially cryptocurrency — where a lost private key or seed phrase means the assets are gone forever, with no bank to appeal to.
- Accounts with value or meaning: email (often the key to resetting everything else), cloud storage and photos, domain names, online businesses, loyalty points, and subscriptions that keep charging.
- Social media — which families may want to memorialise or close.
Make an inventory of these too. The safe way to handle access is not a plaintext list of passwords lying around. Better options:
- A reputable password manager with an emergency-access / legacy feature that grants a trusted person access after a set delay.
- Platform tools where they exist (for example, "legacy contact" / inactive-account features on major services).
- For crypto, a carefully secured record of how to locate keys/seed phrases, stored separately from the keys themselves, with clear (offline) instructions for an heir.
The principle: leave enough for a trusted person to know what exists and how to claim or access it legally — without leaving your security wide open while you're alive.
Keep originals safe and locations known
Wills, property deeds, and policy documents should be in a secure, known place — and your executor should know where. A bank locker is common, but be aware a locker itself can require succession formalities to open, so don't make the will (which authorises everything) the only thing locked inside one. Keep a copy of the will's location and your executor's details accessible.
Make it a living habit
Estate organisation isn't a one-time task:
- Review annually, and after any major change — a new account, a closed one, a property purchase, a life event.
- Tell one or two trusted people that the master record and the will exist, and how to reach them.
- Prune dormant accounts and unused subscriptions; fewer loose ends to find later.
The bottom line
The most heartbreaking estate failures aren't about tax or law — they're about assets the family simply never discovers, and digital accounts locked forever. Build a single, maintained record of everything you own, align your nominations with your will, and make a deliberate plan for your digital assets and access. It's an afternoon's work, refreshed now and then — and it's what turns all your other estate planning into something your family can actually act on.