Assembling Your Critical Information: One of the Most Loving Things You Can Do

By: Marie Marley, PhD
Volunteer – Kansas City Hospice & Palliative Care

When Jennifer’s Alzheimer’s became more advanced, she went to live with her daughter, Susan, in a small town halfway across the country. Unfortunately, due to her Alzheimer’s diagnosis, Jennifer was unable to provide Susan with any of the information she needed to care for her mother.

Importance of planning for the unforeseen future

Susan needed to know details of her mother’s current and past medical conditions, her medications, and her previous surgeries. Who were her mother’s doctors? And where on earth were her insurance ID cards? They weren’t in her mother’s wallet. It was stressful enough taking care of her mother, especially given her Alzheimer’s, which was getting worse by the day. Susan wished that when her mother was still mentally competent, she’d thought to put all this information in one place.

In addition to the missing medical information, Susan was lost without details concerning her mother’s finances. She couldn’t find a checkbook, she didn’t know where her mother banked, and she couldn’t find any information about a savings account – if her mother even had one. Susan knew her mother had an Individual Retirement Account (IRA), and she knew her mother withdrew money from it every month to help with her living expenses, but she had no idea at what financial institution the IRA was located or how she could increase the monthly withdrawals should it ever be needed.

Susan was so stressed out from trying to find all the information she needed, there were times when she didn’t know how she could keep going.

What you can do now to prepare for the future

Do your loved ones know where all your important records and documents are? Have you organized everything and communicated where they can find it? Putting together the information needed if you become seriously ill or when you die can be one of the most caring things you can do for your loved ones. It takes a lot of time, effort and patience to do this, and the information has to be updated regularly, but your loved ones will be incredibly appreciative when the time comes.

Here are some of the needed categories of information:

• Basic information
• Your desires regarding your funeral and related matters
• Financial information
• Details of your insurance policies
• Health information
• Copies of your estate planning documents. 

You may think of additional information you’d like to assemble, but the details below are suggestions to help get you started in the right direction:

• Basic information: This includes data such as your full name, address, date and location of birth (be sure to include the county as well as city and state), Social Security number, driver’s license number and expiration date, car license plate number, important contacts (such as the names and phone numbers of your doctors, lawyer, tax preparer, financial planner, insurance agents, banks, investment companies and others), the location of important documents and where the key to any safe deposit box can be found. Also include the address of the bank where the safe deposit box is located. And if you wish, you can list the contents of the box.
• Your funeral: If you really want to help your loved ones, consider writing your own obituary and making all the needed plans for your funeral or memorial service now. You can Google “How to write an obituary” to get ideas. It may seem like a daunting task, and you may want to find someone who can help you with it. Or if you have a talented writer in your family, they might write the obituary for you. If you’re going to be cremated, be sure to leave instructions as to what you want done with the ashes. Some people go to a funeral home and pre-pay for their funeral and/or cremation.
• Financial information: At a minimum, put together a statement of your income sources and amounts, a list of all your bank accounts and the banks where they’re located, as well as details of any investments.
• Insurance information: You will want to include a list of your insurance policies and contact information for the agent of each. Also, it’s important to make copies of the front and back of your insurance cards.
• Health information: This is an especially critical category. List all your medications and the amount of each one you take, list the same for over-the-counter medications, and record all your current health conditions and previous surgeries. Also include the names, addresses and phone numbers of your doctors. You may also want to provide releases for your loved one(s) to talk to your doctor(s). This would be important if you are ever seriously ill and not able to manage your own healthcare.
• Your estate planning documents: This includes, of course, your will, your general power of attorney, your power of attorney for healthcare, your living will and your trust (if you have one). If you haven’t created these documents yet, you can do it now for free at KCHospice.org/Legacy.

  

You can place all this information in a ring binder. It’s a good idea to number the pages by hand after everything is assembled to make it easier to replace pages when you update them. It’s surprising how quickly the information becomes outdated, so annual updates are important. Most of all, be sure to tell your loved ones where they can find the binder. If you keep it in a locked safe, be sure they know the combination.

Alternatively, you can look on Amazon for an organizer for all your information. Type “Important information for next of kin organizer” in the search bar. Numerous ones are available. Just be sure the one you select has room for all the material I’ve mentioned.

In conclusion, putting together all this information is a laborious process, but once it’s assembled, the annual updates will be relatively simple. Your loved ones will be forever grateful for the care and dedication you put into completing this task for them.

Marie Marley has been a volunteer patient visitor for Kansas City Hospice & Palliative Care since 2019. In 2023 Ingram’s Magazine named her a Hero in Healthcare for her volunteer service. Marie is also the author of Come Back Early Today: A Memoir of Love, Alzheimer’s and Joy. Visit her at ComeBackEarlyToday.com.