The "If I Get Hit by a Bus" Checklist: 5 Things Your Family Needs

Why This List Exists (and Why Almost Nobody Has It Ready)

Most people picture "getting your affairs in order" as a single dramatic afternoon involving a lawyer's office, a leather-bound folder, and probably a will reading with everyone seated in a circle. In practice, the more common failure mode is quieter: someone ends up in the ICU, or doesn't come home from a trip, and their spouse or adult child spends the next 48 hours on the phone trying to figure out who can talk to the doctors, who can pay the mortgage, where the will is, and how to get into a phone that's protected by Face ID belonging to a face that is currently unconscious.

None of that requires a complicated estate plan to fix. It requires five specific things existing, being current, and being findable by someone other than you. That last part is the one people skip.

1. An Advance Health Care Directive

If you're alive but unable to speak for yourself — after an accident, a stroke, surgery gone sideways — someone needs immediate legal authority to talk to your doctors and make medical decisions on your behalf. Without it, your family may need to petition a court for guardianship before anyone can legally act, which is slow, expensive, and exactly the kind of thing you don't want happening while you're in the ICU.

Utah's Advance Health Care Directive does two things in one document: it names your health care agent (the person with authority to make decisions if you can't), and it records your general wishes about treatment, so your agent isn't guessing. Utah requires the document to be signed with one adult witness — the witness can't be your named agent, your agent's spouse, or, if you're in a care facility, anyone who works there.

A directive that lives only in your attorney's file cabinet doesn't help much at 2 a.m. in an emergency room. Your agent — and ideally a backup — needs a copy, and your primary care provider's office should have one on file too.

2. A Financial Power of Attorney

This is the document people forget about because it doesn't come up in movies. If you're incapacitated but still alive, your medical directive covers your health decisions — but someone also needs to be able to pay your mortgage, access your bank account, and keep your small business's payroll running. A Financial Power of Attorney names an agent with authority to manage your financial affairs while you can't.

Without one, your family's only path is a court-supervised conservatorship — another process that takes time and money precisely when neither is available. A properly executed power of attorney sidesteps that entirely.

One important distinction that surprises people: a financial power of attorney terminates automatically at death. It only covers incapacity while you're alive. After death, authority shifts to your personal representative (through probate) or your successor trustee (if your assets are titled in a trust) — which is why item 3 on this list still matters even if you have a rock-solid power of attorney.

3. Your Will or Trust — and, More Importantly, Where It Actually Is

Having a will is necessary but not sufficient. A will that nobody can locate is, from a practical standpoint, close to not having one at all — and it's a more common problem than you'd expect. Family members have spent weeks searching file cabinets, safe deposit boxes with expired access, and "somewhere in the garage" storage bins looking for a document that turned out to be three miles away in an attorney's office the whole time.

The fix is almost embarrassingly simple: tell someone. Your spouse, your adult child, or your successor trustee should know exactly where the original document is and how to get to it — not a vague sense that "there's a lawyer somewhere who has it."

• If your attorney's firm holds the original, your family needs the firm's name and phone number, not just a memory of a name from a few years ago.
• If you're keeping the original at home, a fireproof safe is fine — as long as someone besides you has the combination or key.
• If your assets are held in a revocable living trust, your family also needs to know which accounts and property are actually titled in the trust's name, since a trust only controls what's been transferred into it.

4. A Password List for Your Digital Life

Your family's problems today aren't limited to paper documents. Email, online banking, retirement accounts, cryptocurrency, cloud photo storage, and even your phone itself are all locked behind credentials that die with you unless someone else has them — or unless your estate plan grants legal authority to access them, which Utah law does allow for a properly appointed fiduciary under the state's digital assets statute.

Two things need to happen, and they're different:

• Legal authority. Your will, trust, power of attorney, and Advance Health Care Directive should each include digital asset language authorizing your fiduciaries to access your online accounts. Without it, some companies will refuse access even to a court-appointed executor.
• Practical access. Legal authority doesn't unlock a phone. A password manager with an emergency access or legacy contact feature is the cleanest solution — it lets a designated person get in without your passwords being written on a sticky note or sitting in a spreadsheet titled "passwords.xlsx."

5. A Letter of Instruction

This is the least legally significant document on the list and, in practice, one of the most useful. A letter of instruction isn't binding and doesn't replace a will — it's a plain-language reference sheet that saves your family from having to reconstruct your entire financial and professional life from memory during the worst week of theirs. A useful letter of instruction typically includes:

• Contact information for your attorney, accountant, financial advisor, and insurance agent;
• A list of financial accounts, insurance policies, and where the statements come from;
• Where your will, trust, and other original documents are physically located;
• Login information for your password manager, if you use one;
• Any preferences about funeral or memorial arrangements, if you have them.

Update it once a year, or whenever something on the list changes — a new bank, a new advisor, a new phone. A letter of instruction that's five years out of date sends your family chasing a financial advisor who retired in 2023.

The Checklist, Side by Side

None of This Is Morbid — It's Just Logistics

It's easy to put this off because thinking about it feels heavy. In practice, none of these five items require you to have made peace with your mortality or picked out a casket. They're logistics: who talks to the doctor, who pays the mortgage, where's the will, how do we get into the phone, and who do we call. Getting them in place is a few appointments and an afternoon of writing things down — not a spiritual undertaking.

The families who navigate a sudden crisis with the least chaos aren't the ones with the most elaborate estate plans. They're the ones where someone besides the person in the hospital bed already knew where everything was.

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is the "hit by a bus" plan in estate planning?+
  It's shorthand for the small set of documents and information your family needs immediately if something sudden happens to you — whether that means you're incapacitated and can't make decisions, or you've died. It's not a full estate plan by itself, but it covers the first 48 hours: who can speak to your doctors, who can pay your bills, where your will is, how to get into your phone and accounts, and who to call.
• Where should I actually keep my will so my family can find it?+
  Tell at least one trusted person — your spouse, adult child, or successor trustee — exactly where the original is and how to access it. A fireproof safe with a combination only you know defeats the purpose. If your attorney's firm holds the original, your family needs the firm's name and phone number, not just a vague memory that "a lawyer in Provo has it."
• Should I write down all my passwords somewhere?+
  You should maintain a current list of your accounts and how to access them — ideally through a password manager with an emergency access feature, or a written list kept somewhere secure and known to one trusted person. What you should not do is put your actual passwords in your will: a will becomes a public court record during probate, so anything written in it is no longer private.
• Does a financial power of attorney still work after I die?+
  No. A financial power of attorney terminates automatically at death — it only grants authority while you're alive but unable to manage your own affairs. After death, authority passes to your personal representative (if there's a will going through probate) or your successor trustee (if assets are titled in a trust). This is exactly why both documents matter: the power of attorney covers incapacity, and the will or trust covers what happens after death.
• What is a letter of instruction and is it legally binding?+
  A letter of instruction is an informal, non-binding document that lists practical information your family needs: contact information for your attorney, accountant, financial advisor, and insurance agent; account and policy numbers; the location of your will and other originals; and any wishes about funeral or memorial arrangements. It has no legal force and doesn't replace a will, but it saves your family from hunting for information during an already difficult week.
• How often should I update this checklist?+
  Review it at least once a year and after any major change — a new bank or brokerage account, a new phone or primary email, a change in who you'd want making medical or financial decisions, or a move to a new state. Utah's Advance Health Care Directive and Financial Power of Attorney don't expire on their own, but stale contact information and outdated account lists are the most common reason families can't act quickly when they need to.