Why this exists

My dad died, and I was his executor. What I had to work with was the letters I found in his house. That was it. No list, no register, nothing that said what he had or where it was. I worked through it the only way you can, one letter and one statement at a time. I think I did everything. But I had no way of knowing where to start, and I still have no way of knowing what I missed. That is the part that stays: not the work, the not-knowing.

Grief is heavy enough on its own. Adding months of searching for assets on top of it is a weight nobody should hand the people they love. I do not want to leave that to my kids. When I die I want it to be easy for them, and I want what I have to reach the people I love, not sit lost in accounts nobody knows exist.

What I needed then did not exist in a form I trusted to still be there when it mattered: a plain record of what exists, where it is, and what you want done about it, kept by the family rather than by a company. So I built it. It is an encrypted file and one printed page. Everything else about it follows from that experience.

Jamie Watters · jamiewatters.work