The letter to your family
Practical (passwords, accounts, where things are) and personal. The letter most men never write.
Practical (passwords, accounts, where things are) and personal. The letter most men never write.
I wrote the first version of mine on a long-haul flight back from Singapore in 2024. It took about forty minutes. It was bullet points, mostly. Bank logins, the master password to my password manager, the accountant's number, the solicitor's number, where the will was filed. At the bottom I wrote a paragraph that wasn't bullet points.
The letter is the simplest piece of estate paperwork most men ever write, and the one that closes the gap between "we have the documents" and "she actually knows where things are."
The will, the EPOA, the ACD and the binding super nominations are the legal infrastructure. They don't, on their own, tell anyone where things live.
Your partner walking into the day after will need to find:
Most of this is in your head, your phone, or your work laptop. None of it is somewhere she can grab it on the worst week of her life.
A practical structure:
Section 1: The documents.
Section 2: The money.
Section 3: The people.
Section 4: The passwords.
Section 5: The personal paragraph.
Two or three sentences, no more.
"If you're reading this, the worst has happened. Don't be polite. Use everything we've built. The kids will be fine because you're their mother. Tell my parents I love them. Ring [mate's name] before you ring anyone else."
Not a goodbye. A specific instruction set for the first 48 hours.
The aim is one A4 page, two at the most.
Tell her you've written it.
Pick a Saturday. Open a blank document. Use the four-section structure above.
When you're done:
Write it short. Write it true. Tell her where it is.
A blunt field guide to the first month after the conversation. Sleep, paperwork, the kids, and the part nobody warns you about.
5 minHow to start the talk you've been rehearsing in the shower for six months. A practical guide to the words, the room, the aftermath.
4 minWhen she ends it and you didn't see it coming. The first 72 hours, the stories you'll tell yourself, and what to actually do.
4 minA self-interrogation guide for the man considering ending his marriage. Not advice. Questions. The hard ones, in order.
5 min