If something happened tomorrow, could your family find the paperwork?

This page is written by Papers in Order, the publisher of the printable kit described below.

The day Carol's mother went to the hospital

Call her Carol. She is in her late fifties. Her mother is eighty-four, lives alone in the house Carol grew up in, and has never paid a bill late.

On a Tuesday a neighbor calls: an ambulance has taken her mother to the hospital. When Carol gets there her mother is down the hall, in no state to answer questions, and Carol is at the admissions desk.

The clerk asks for the insurance cards, a list of the medications with the doses, any allergies, and the name of the regular doctor.

Carol knows there is a pill for blood pressure. She thinks it is white. She does not know the dose or how many others there are. The doctor is Hendricks, or Henderson. The insurance cards are in her mother's purse, and the purse is at the house.

She drives forty minutes back, finds the purse on a kitchen chair, and stands in the bathroom copying the labels off pill bottles onto the back of a pharmacy receipt. One bottle is two years old. She copies it anyway.

The weeks after

Her mother spends nine days in the hospital and then goes to a rehab center. She is getting better. Somebody has to keep her house running, and that is Carol.

Carol does not know which bills pay themselves, or from which account. She is not sure which bank the accounts are at: the desk holds checkbooks from two. She does not know where the insurance policies are, or the will, or the name of the attorney who drew it up.

Her mother's phone is on the kitchen counter, locked. The email and the online accounts are behind it.

What Carol has is paper. Twice a week she empties the mailbox and opens everything, because an envelope is how she learns an account exists. She goes through the drawer under the microwave, full of envelopes in rubber bands, then the filing cabinet. The folders are labeled in her mother's handwriting: House, Misc, Keep. Keep holds a 2009 water bill and the manual for a television nobody owns anymore.

She asks her mother where the will is. Her mother says it is in the safe place, and is tired, and Carol lets it go. She calls her brother, who thought she knew. On the second Sunday a church friend of her mother's phones the house, worried. Carol had not known there was anyone to tell.

Her mother had all of it handled. It was all in her mother's head.

See what is in the 84-page kit

The same weeks with a binder on the shelf

Now run the same Tuesday with a binder on the kitchen shelf, one her mother filled in herself.

Carol still stops at the house and takes the binder with the purse. The Medication List has each medicine, the dose, when it is taken, what it is for and who prescribed it, with the allergies at the top. The Medical One-Pager puts the allergies and the doctors on one page. The health insurance page names the plan and says where the cards are kept. It records only the last four digits of an ID, so Carol collects the cards from the place it names.

In the weeks after, the If I'm in the Hospital page says who looks after the house and the bills during a hospital stay. The accounts list gives each account by bank, kind of account and last four digits, never the full number. Another page lists everything on autopay. The Master Document Inventory and the Where Things Are page say where the will, the passports, the deed, the insurance policies and the safe deposit box key are kept. The binder does not hold the originals. Who to Call First gives names and phone numbers in order. The Digital Life pages hold password hints, never the passwords themselves, and the accounts tied to a phone number.

Carol would still have the calls to make and the mail to open. She would know what exists before she started.

Five things to write down first

If a whole binder feels like too much, start with the five things Carol went looking for:

1. The medication list. Each medicine, the dose, when it is taken, and the allergies.
2. Where the insurance cards are. And the name of the plan.
3. The bills. Which ones pay themselves, and from which account.
4. Where the documents are. The will, the deed, the insurance policies.
5. Who to call first. Names and phone numbers, in order.

Each of the five has a page in the kit.

If this is your house

You may be Carol in this story, the grown child or the spouse at the desk. You may also be the mother in your own house: the organized one, with the tax returns in labeled folders.

This happens in tidy houses because a system that works is run by one person, and nobody asks that person to explain it. Only you know the key to the fireproof box is in the desk.

You can do this yourself with a notebook, and plenty of people do. The slow part is deciding what belongs on each page. That is what we sell: the headings are already decided.

What is in the kit

The Home Binder Family Kit is 84 printable pages in one PDF, US Letter, printed at home and filled in with a pen. After a cover, a contents page, a first-week plan and tab labels come eight sections:

• Grab First: emergency contacts, a hospital page, a go-bag list, the pets.
• Medical: medications, health history, providers, appointments, vaccinations, insurance.
• Important Documents: what you have, where the original lives, what to keep and what to shred.
• Money: accounts, bills, autopay, income, debts, cards, taxes.
• Home: maintenance, service people, appliances and warranties, an inventory for an insurance claim.
• Digital Life: password hints on paper (never the passwords themselves), devices, the accounts tied to a phone number.
• Everything My Family Needs to Know: where things are, who to call first, wishes, a letter.
• Caring for a Parent: the care team, the schedule, a daily log, medications by hour, what to check on a visit.

The pages are plain: dark ink and light shading, so a home printer gets through all of them and a filled-in page still photocopies clearly.

See what is in the 84-page kit

What it is not

There are no legal forms in the kit: no will, no power of attorney, no medical directive. An attorney can prepare a will or a power of attorney, and your doctor or hospital can tell you which directive form is valid where you live. The kit has a page for writing down which of those documents you have and where the signed originals are.

Nothing is filled in for you. Writing it down is your work.

Nobody at Papers in Order is a lawyer, an accountant or a clinician. These are organizing pages, not advice.

What it costs

$19, paid once. The download link is emailed within a minute or two and works for thirty days, so you can print a page again. If the kit is not what you expected, write to us within fourteen days for a refund, no questions.

The next page shows the full section list and four of the actual pages before you pay.

See what is in the 84-page kit

The free ten-page starter has the emergency contacts page and a one-page medical summary and is enough to begin.