How to Organise Important Documents for Your Family If You Die

Sort your documents into three piles and the job gets simple. Pile one is the paperwork that already exists and only needs finding: identification, certificates, policies, account records. Pile two is the documents that carry no weight unless you make them while you are well, which is where a power of attorney, a health directive and a super nomination sit. Pile three is the short written note that says where piles one and two are kept, because Moneysmart, ASIC's consumer site, puts the point plainly: listing your important documents and where they are kept can help your family and your executor. (Source: moneysmart.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) On passwords, leave the map and not the keys, which the section below unpacks properly.

This page goes through which documents exist, which ones stop working if you leave them too late, where each one is held, and how to keep the whole set current. Powers of attorney, health directives and land titles are run by each state and territory rather than nationally, so every state point below names its state and links to that state's own page. Use your own state's form.

The documents your family will be asked for

Moneysmart publishes the list, and it is shorter than most people fear. It names identification, certificates, insurance, property papers, bank and superannuation records, investment documents and any prepaid funeral plan. (Source: moneysmart.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) Worked through in an evening:

1. Photo identification: passport, driver's licence, or an Australian government proof of age card.
2. Birth certificate.
3. Marriage certificate, and any divorce papers that go with it.
4. The will, and the name of whoever holds the signed original.
5. Your enduring power of attorney, and your health directive or guardian appointment.
6. Life insurance policies, including any cover sitting inside a super account.
7. Health insurance details and any pensioner concession card.
8. Home and contents insurance, plus documents for other properties you own.
9. Bank account details for every account, including the dormant one.
10. Superannuation records for every fund, and the nomination recorded on each.
11. Investment documents: securities, share certificates, bonds.
12. Any prepaid funeral plan.

Two of those, the will and the enduring power of attorney, do work no other document can do. The rest are records. Records can be reconstructed with enough phone calls. The two that cannot be reconstructed are the reason the next section exists.

The documents that only work if you make them in advance

A will handles what happens after you die. Nothing in it helps during the months or years when you are alive and cannot sign, which is the gap most families walk into first.

Moneysmart draws the line between the two kinds of power of attorney. A general power of attorney lets someone make financial and legal decisions for you for a set time, often used when you are overseas or unavailable, and if you lose the ability to make decisions yourself, a general power of attorney ends. (Source: moneysmart.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) An enduring power of attorney lets someone make financial and legal decisions for you and continues to operate if you lose the ability to make decisions. (Source: moneysmart.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) Same job, opposite behaviour at the exact moment it is needed.

Medical decisions are a separate appointment again. An enduring guardian, sometimes called a medical power of attorney, makes medical and lifestyle decisions for you if you can no longer do so, and Moneysmart is explicit that they cannot make financial decisions for you. (Source: moneysmart.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026)

The forms are not national. Moneysmart says each state and territory has different rules for setting up a power of attorney. (Source: moneysmart.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) The naming differs too. In Queensland the health document is called an advance health directive, described by the Queensland Government as a legal document that allows you to plan for your future health care. (Source: qld.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) In Victoria the equivalent is an advance care directive, and Victoria's Office of the Public Advocate splits it in two: you can record your values and preferences for your medical treatment, called a values directive, or make legally binding statements directed to your health practitioners in which you consent to, or refuse, specific future medical treatment, called an instructional directive. (Source: publicadvocate.vic.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026)

Two states, two names, two structures. Download your own state's form rather than a generic one off a search result. The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing funds Advance Care Planning Australia, which it describes as a national program that promotes advance care planning, including resources and national curriculum and learning, and which can point you at the right one. (Source: health.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026)

Your super is a separate document, and the will does not reach it

This is the single most common gap in an otherwise tidy folder. Moneysmart states it directly: your will does not automatically cover your superannuation, and you need to nominate one or more beneficiaries through your super fund, which can be your dependants or your legal personal representatives, such as the executor of your estate. (Source: moneysmart.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026)

The money in your super account does not automatically form part of your estate, so Moneysmart says it is important to tell your super fund who should receive your super and any life insurance if you die. (Source: moneysmart.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) The life insurance point catches people out, since the largest policy many people hold sits inside a fund they rarely look at.

Who decides depends on the nomination. The ATO explains that where the fund's rules allow a binding death benefit nomination, you can nominate one or more of your dependants and your legal personal representative, and that with a non-binding nomination or no nomination, the trustee may use their discretion to decide which dependant or dependants to pay. (Source: ato.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026)

And a binding nomination has a shelf life. Moneysmart describes the lapsing kind this way: the super fund must pay your benefit to your nominated eligible beneficiary, and these need to be renewed or changed every 3 years otherwise they expire. Without a valid binding nomination, the trustee decides who receives your super within the rules of superannuation law. (Source: moneysmart.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026)

So the super record in your folder is two lines per fund. The fund, and the nomination currently recorded on it, with the date you last confirmed it.

Passwords: two Australian Government agencies, two different answers

Here the advice genuinely conflicts, and it is better to see both than to be handed a tidy rule that ignores one of them.

The Australian Cyber Security Centre, part of the Australian Signals Directorate, recommends password managers. Its page says they can help you create, manage and store passwords for each of your accounts, that you only need a single master password, key, PIN or biometrics to get in, and that the best way to protect that is multi-factor authentication and as strong a master password as you can make. (Source: cyber.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) It then adds a warning that matters a great deal for this topic: consider what accounts you are putting into your password manager, because some service providers, like banks, may not cover losses if you store your password in a password manager. (Source: cyber.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) The same page says not to share your passphrase with anyone. (Source: cyber.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026)

The eSafety Commissioner, also an Australian Government office, is looking at a different problem, which is what your family can reach after you die. Its digital legacy guidance counts access codes and passwords for financial accounts and utilities among your digital assets, and tells people to document access codes, passwords and usernames, keep these secure and separate from your list of assets, and let trusted family members or a legal professional know where they are. (Source: esafety.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026)

Read side by side, one agency is protecting your account today and the other is protecting your family later. Both are right about the thing each is looking at, and neither one cancels the other out. The practical way through is to split the problem rather than average the advice.

Leave the map, not the keys. Your family needs to know which bank, which super fund, which insurer and which email address. That is the map, and writing it down breaks nobody's terms. The passwords themselves are the keys, and the ACSC warning about banks is the reason a list of banking passwords in a drawer is a worse idea than it looks. Moneysmart's scams guidance is a useful sanity check on how differently a bank treats this: a genuine bank may contact you about a suspicious transaction, but it will never ask you for sensitive information such as online banking passwords or codes. (Source: moneysmart.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026)

For the accounts where you do want someone to get in, the platforms have built the handover themselves, which sidesteps the argument entirely. Apple describes a Legacy Contact as someone you choose to have access to certain data in your Apple Account after your death, while being clear about what is excluded: purchased movies, music, books and subscriptions, and data stored in your iCloud Keychain, which is where payment information, passwords and passkeys live. (Source: support.apple.com, checked 26 Sep 2026) Google's Inactive Account Manager is described as a way for users to share parts of their account data or notify someone if they have been inactive for a certain period of time, and it lets you designate a third party, such as an immediate family member, to receive certain account data in the event of your death or inactivity. (Source: support.google.com, checked 26 Sep 2026)

Both take a few minutes and both can only be set up by you, while you are here. There is more on the account side of this in what happens to your online accounts when you die.

Where each document actually lives

Half of what a family hunts for is not lost, it is held by an organisation nobody thought to ring. Going document by document:

The will. Moneysmart's guidance is to store it in a safe place and tell someone you trust where to find it, naming a fireproof safe at home, your solicitor, the Courts or the Public Trustee. (Source: moneysmart.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) The trade-offs are covered in where to keep your will. What belongs in your document list is one line: who holds the signed original.

The super nomination. Held by the fund, not by you and not in your will. The form you signed sits in the fund's records, which is why the useful thing to write down is the fund and what you nominated, not just the member number.

Property titles. These are state records. The Australian Registrars' National Electronic Conveyancing Council, made up of the state and territory land registrars, explains that the land registry in each state and territory maintains the Torrens Register of interests in land titles for that jurisdiction. (Source: arnecc.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) In New South Wales that register sits under the Registrar General, whose office says nearly all land held by private persons in NSW is held in the Torrens Title Register. (Source: registrargeneral.nsw.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) The other jurisdictions each run their own, so look up the registry in the state where the property sits rather than assuming one national search.

Certificates. Birth, marriage and death certificates come from the births, deaths and marriages registry in the relevant state or territory. Service NSW describes the Australian Death Notification Service as a free online service to advise multiple organisations that a person has died, and notes it needs a state or territory death certificate before a notification can progress, with account or membership numbers helpful but not required. (Source: service.nsw.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) Account numbers being helpful is exactly the argument for writing them down once.

Online accounts. Access is not automatic for your family. The eSafety Commissioner notes that many social media platforms have options to memorialise a profile, and that some allow you to nominate a legacy contact with limited access to manage the account. It also says the ability to access or shut down accounts varies, especially if you do not have access to the emails or the passwords attached to each account, and that generally, a death certificate is required. (Source: esafety.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026)

Funeral wishes: a document whose weight depends on your state

Most people assume that writing it down settles it. Mostly it does not, and the exceptions are state by state.

The Victorian Law Reform Commission, reviewing the law across the country, states the general position: in Australia, the common law position in relation to funeral and burial instructions is settled, and a person's wishes with respect to the disposal of their body are not legally binding. (Source: lawreform.vic.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) Tasmania's state-owned Public Trustee says the same about the will specifically, that funeral wishes under a will are not legally binding on your family or your executor, but rather demonstrate your preferences. (Source: publictrustee.tas.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026)

Cremation is the exception, and it is unevenly spread. The Commission records that with the exception of Tasmania and Victoria, every Australian state and territory upholds people's wishes to be cremated or their wishes not to be cremated in certain circumstances. In New South Wales and Queensland, where the deceased has left written instructions expressing a desire to be cremated, the law prohibits disposal of the body other than in accordance with those instructions. In the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales and Western Australia, if a deceased leaves instructions expressing a desire not to be cremated, it is unlawful to cremate the body. Victorians do not have that second protection, because similar legislation that generally recognised a person's instructions not to cremate was repealed in 2003. (Source: lawreform.vic.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026)

Who carries the decision out is a state question too. The State Library of NSW's legal guide says that in New South Wales it is the executor's responsibility to organise the funeral, that the executor has a right to the possession and custody of the body until it is buried or cremated, and that the executor is not bound by specific directions left in the will. (Source: sl.nsw.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026)

For a filing system, the lesson is about placement rather than wording. A funeral is often arranged before anyone opens the will, so wishes kept only inside the will tend to arrive late. A separate page your family can find on the first day does the job the will cannot.

Keeping the set current

A folder assembled once and never opened again quietly goes out of date, and the parts that expire are the parts that matter most.

The clearest example is the super nomination. Moneysmart says lapsing binding nominations need to be renewed or changed every 3 years otherwise they expire, and that without a valid binding nomination the trustee decides. (Source: moneysmart.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) So a nomination signed when you opened the account may already have lapsed without anybody writing to tell you.

Moving interstate is the other one worth a look, because the forms are state instruments. Victoria's Office of the Public Advocate notes that valid appointments made in other Australian states and territories are also recognised there. (Source: publicadvocate.vic.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) That is Victoria's position. Other states and territories set their own recognition rules, so a move is a reason to check with the equivalent office in the state you have moved to rather than to assume the old document travels.

A workable rhythm is one sitting a year, plus a check after anything that changes the shape of your life: a marriage, a separation, a new job with a new super fund, a house bought or sold. None of those prompt you. Write the date you last checked each item beside it, and a vague worry about whether the folder is current turns into a one-minute answer.

Where does this leave your family?

With something they can work from on the first day instead of the first month.

A solicitor is worth paying for the legal corner, the will above all, and for anything likely to be argued over. That work is a small share of what your family will actually be doing. The rest is the map: which fund, which policy, which registry, which drawer. It is a kitchen table job and it costs a fraction of what guided help costs.

If you want somewhere to put it, The Estate Organiser is the book those answers get written into, with the prompts already there. It is filled in on your own computer or printed and written by hand, so the account numbers stay in the house rather than on a company's website. The free Executor Toolkit is the other end of the same problem, for the person doing the work once it is real.

Whatever you write it in, the test is the same. Could somebody who loves you, and who has never seen your filing, find the will, the funds, the policies and the bills without you in the room?

Common questions about organising important documents in Australia

What documents does my family need when I die?

Moneysmart's list covers most of it: identification such as a passport, driver's licence or Australian government proof of age card, birth certificate, marriage certificate, life insurance policies, health insurance details, pensioner concession card, home and contents insurance, documents for other properties you own, bank account details, superannuation records, investment documents including securities, share certificates and bonds, and prepaid funeral plans. (Source: moneysmart.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) Alongside those sit the will, the enduring power of attorney and your health directive, which are made rather than collected.

Should I write down my passwords for my family?

Two Australian Government agencies say different things, so it is worth knowing both. The Australian Cyber Security Centre warns that you should consider what accounts you are putting into your password manager, because some service providers, like banks, may not cover losses if you store your password in a password manager, and says not to share your passphrase with anyone. (Source: cyber.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) The eSafety Commissioner, planning for digital legacy, says to document access codes, passwords and usernames, keep these secure and separate from your list of assets, and let trusted family members or a legal professional know where they are. (Source: esafety.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026)

A workable middle is to leave the map and not the keys: record which bank, which fund, which insurer and which email address, and use the platforms' own tools for account handover instead of a banking password list.

Where should I keep my important documents?

Somewhere safe that a trusted person knows about. Moneysmart's guidance on the will is to store it in a safe place and tell someone you trust where to find it, naming a fireproof safe at home, your solicitor, the Courts or the Public Trustee. (Source: moneysmart.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) Some documents are not yours to store at all. Land titles sit with each state's land registry, which the Australian Registrars' National Electronic Conveyancing Council describes as maintaining the Torrens Register for that jurisdiction, and your super nomination sits with the fund. (Source: arnecc.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) For those, what you keep at home is the note saying where they are.

Does my will cover my superannuation?

Moneysmart says your will does not automatically cover your superannuation, and that you need to nominate one or more beneficiaries through your super fund, which can be your dependants or your legal personal representatives such as the executor of your estate. (Source: moneysmart.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) The money in your super account does not automatically form part of your estate, so the fund needs to be told who should receive your super and any life insurance. (Source: moneysmart.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026)

Binding nominations of the lapsing kind need to be renewed or changed every 3 years or they expire, after which the trustee decides. (Source: moneysmart.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026)

What is the difference between a general and an enduring power of attorney?

Timing, and it is the whole point of the document. Moneysmart says a general power of attorney lets someone make financial and legal decisions for you for a set time, often used when you are overseas or unavailable, and that if you lose the ability to make decisions yourself, a general power of attorney ends. (Source: moneysmart.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) An enduring power of attorney continues to operate if you lose the ability to make decisions. (Source: moneysmart.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) Each state and territory has different rules for setting one up, so use your own state's form.

Are my funeral wishes legally binding in Australia?

Generally not. The Victorian Law Reform Commission states that in Australia the common law position is settled, and a person's wishes with respect to the disposal of their body are not legally binding. (Source: lawreform.vic.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026) Tasmania's Public Trustee says funeral wishes under a will are not legally binding on your family or your executor, but rather demonstrate your preferences. (Source: publictrustee.tas.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026)

Cremation is treated differently in some places. In New South Wales and Queensland, written instructions expressing a desire to be cremated must be followed, and in the ACT, New South Wales and Western Australia it is unlawful to cremate a body where the person left instructions expressing a desire not to be. Tasmania and Victoria sit outside that protection. (Source: lawreform.vic.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026)

How often should I update my document list?

Once a year is a reasonable rhythm, plus a check after anything that changes your circumstances. The item with a real clock on it is the super nomination: Moneysmart says lapsing binding nominations need to be renewed or changed every 3 years otherwise they expire. (Source: moneysmart.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026)

Moving interstate is worth a check too, since the forms are state documents. Victoria's Office of the Public Advocate notes that valid appointments made in other Australian states and territories are also recognised in Victoria, and other jurisdictions set their own recognition rules. (Source: publicadvocate.vic.gov.au, checked 26 Sep 2026)

Related guides

• What should I leave for my family so they can find everything?
• Power of attorney vs will: what each one does
• Where should you keep your will in Australia?
• Executor checklist Australia: what to do, in order

Educational content only. Not legal, financial or tax advice. Estate laws vary across Australian states and territories. Always consult a qualified professional about your specific situation.

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