The Next of Kin Workbook

Everything your family needs to know, in one place.

When a life ends, a family begins a second crisis. The will is one document. The estate plan is another. But the day-to-day operational reality your survivors face — the funeral home that already has your file, the password manager master location, the safe combination, the radio gear, the dog’s vet, the dependents who need a guardian, the bank you no longer use but still receive statements from — that lives in your head. Until you put it somewhere they can find.

The Next of Kin Workbook is the place you put it.

Why this exists

Most estate planning products focus on the legal instruments: the will, the trust, the advance directive. Those matter, but they answer a narrow question: who gets what. They don’t tell your family who to call first, where the workbook itself is kept, what to do if you die abroad, who knows about the firearms, which collector should be called for the coin collection, or whether the dog has a place to go.

This is the workbook for everything else.

It’s built from thirty years of operational experience in emergency management — the same discipline that produces continuity-of-operations plans for governments and large organizations. Applied to a household. With the assumption that the people reading it will be grieving, tired, and making decisions they didn’t expect to make.

It is paper-first by design. The next of kin doesn’t need a working laptop, an unlocked password manager, or your phone. They need a binder they can pick up, flip to the right page, and start working through.

What’s inside

The workbook is 80+ pages, organized in three layers:

For your next of kin — read this first. Quick Start (the first hour after a death), step-by-step Instructions for the Person Reading This, Emergency Medical Information (a single page to hand to a paramedic), Immediate Actions (24 hours / 72 hours / first week / first 30 days), Notification Call Sheet, Funeral Instructions Worksheet.

For you to complete now. Identification & Vital Records, Master Combinations & Codes Index, Financial Accounts & Assets, Digital Estate, Online Presence (28 platforms covered), Insurance & Survivor Benefits, Recurring Obligations, Property & Vehicles, Firearms (with NFA Form 5 procedures), Amateur Radio Equipment (with antenna safety guidance), Collections & Collectibles (with grading and dealer contacts), Personal Bequests, Dependents & Pets (parallel primary/alternate caretakers), Medical History & Anatomical Donation.

Working tools. Master Document Locations Index, Master Account Register, Eulogy & Obituary Source Material, Per-Pet Continuity Sheets, Household Operations Handover, and a full Personal Letters of Instruction section with twelve detailed prompts for the letter to your executor.

Every section is clearly tagged so the reader knows immediately whether it’s something you fill in now, something your survivors use later, or both.

Who this is for

Anyone with people who depend on them. A spouse, children, an aging parent, a partner. If your absence creates uncertainty for someone, this workbook removes a meaningful portion of that uncertainty.

Anyone with assets across multiple categories. Multiple bank accounts, retirement plans, real estate, vehicles, business interests, digital assets, collections, firearms, valuable hobbies. The more your estate touches, the more your survivors face if you don’t document it.

Anyone with specialized possessions. Hams, hunters, collectors, hobbyists, business owners. The workbook has dedicated sections for amateur radio (with antenna and tower safety guidance), firearms (with full NFA procedures), and collectibles (with appraisal and dealer contact fields). These items have specialized disposition needs that a generic estate plan misses.

Anyone who has already done the legal work. If you have a will, a trust, an advance directive, and beneficiary designations on every account, you are ahead of most. The Next of Kin Workbook is the operational layer those documents don’t cover. It’s not a replacement for legal estate planning; it’s the working manual that runs alongside it.

Anyone preparing the family they leave behind. Whether you’re 30 or 70, healthy or facing diagnosis, in a stable marriage or rebuilding after divorce — the only wrong time to do this is after.

What makes this different

Most estate workbooks are checklists. This is an operations manual.

It tells your family who to call in the first hour, what not to do until the will is read, why home-hospice deaths require a different first call than home-not-hospice deaths, what happens if you die abroad and who pays for repatriation, why the executor should call the attorney before the funeral home, and how to dispose of regulated property — firearms, NFA items, controlled substances, digital assets — without committing federal felonies in the process.

If you’ve ever read an estate-planning book and felt it didn’t match the reality of running a household, you’re right. This one does.

How to use it

The workbook is designed to be filled in over two or three sittings totaling four to six hours. It’s not light work, but it’s finite.

Sitting one — the easy parts. Identification, notification contacts, estate documents, professional advisors. Information you already have.

Sitting two — the inventories. Financial accounts, digital estate, online presence, insurance, recurring obligations. Done with your password manager open and statements at hand.

Sitting three — the harder parts. Personal bequests, funeral wishes, letters to people who matter. The work that takes time and emotional space. There is no rush.

Once complete, the working copy goes in a fire-resistant home safe. A scanned backup goes on an encrypted USB held off-site by a trusted person. Your executor and one alternate know where both are. You review it annually — birthday, tax season, New Year — and after any major life event.

The workbook is more valuable 80% complete than 0% complete. A half-finished bequest list is more useful than no list at all.