Most people who haven't sorted out their estate planning know it. They mean to. The reason it stalls is rarely the legal part — there are good attorneys, there are good templates. The reason it stalls is that the gathering part feels enormous. Account numbers across half a dozen institutions. Insurance policies in three filing cabinets. Passwords your family will need but doesn't have. Wishes you've thought about but never written down.
The reason this matters isn't morbid. It's practical. The people you love are already going to be in a hard moment when they need this information; making them hunt for it is a kindness you can give now, calmly, on your own schedule.
A vault that holds the documents, the inventory, and the conversations that surround them turns a year-long stall into something you can chip at on a Sunday afternoon. The structure stays small. The agent helps with the parts that are tedious. (For grief and the practical work after a loss, A Notes Setup for Grief and the Practical Work of Loss is the companion guide.)
This isn't legal advice — for the actual will, trust, or directive, you'll want an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction. What this is is a place to gather everything an attorney (and your family, eventually) will need.
One parent page, with the right shape underneath
In Docapybara, estate planning gets a single parent page. The page can hold the high-level shape — who's involved, what's been done, what's pending — and child pages branch from there for Documents, Accounts, Insurance, Property, Wishes, People, and Letters.
Pages nest with no depth limit, OneNote-style. The shape doesn't have to be perfect on day one; it'll evolve as you actually do the work. The agent treats the whole structure as one searchable pile when you ask a question.
The single most important habit: keep this page. Don't move it, don't reorganize it for fun, don't let it sprawl into a pile of half-finished drafts. Your future executor or family will be looking for one place; make it easy to find.
A documents page that survives misplacement
The Documents page is the legal core. The will (or trust), the durable power of attorney, the healthcare proxy, the advance directive, any beneficiary designations that don't live in the will itself.
Drop scans (or photos clearly enough taken to read) of every signed document onto a child page, dated. PDFs convert to markdown automatically when you upload them, so the agent can read the text — including which witnesses signed where, which account numbers are referenced, and which clauses you'll want to review the next time something changes.
For a will or trust drafted by an attorney, keep both the executed version and any drafts that show your thinking. "What did the second draft of my will say about the cabin, and how did the final version change?" The agent can compare and quote.
A Status note at the top of Documents — last updated, attorney's name and contact, where the original signed copies live physically — saves a future executor real time. They'll need the original; tell them where it is.
An account inventory that doesn't require root access to your past self
The single most useful thing in a vault for estate purposes — outside the legal documents — is a complete account inventory. Not the passwords (a password manager handles those). The list: every institution you have a relationship with, what kind of account it is, an account identifier (last four digits is enough), the contact path, and any beneficiary designation already on file.
An inline database does this well. The :::database::: directive lets a small spreadsheet live alongside whatever prose context you want. Columns for institution, account type, identifier, beneficiary, contact, notes.
The agent can update it. "Add the Vanguard account I opened last month — IRA, beneficiary is my spouse, contact is the standard 800 number." Row appears. The point of doing this once and maintaining it is that closing or transferring an account on someone else's behalf becomes possible without forensic accounting.
For credentials specifically, point to the password manager (and the recovery path for it) — don't try to make your vault a password vault. The two systems do different jobs.
A related table that's worth maintaining: subscriptions and recurring charges. The streaming services, the SaaS subscriptions, the gym, the storage unit. The kind of thing that quietly drains a checking account for months after a death because no one knew it was there.
Insurance, property, and the things that aren't accounts
Insurance is its own page. Life, health (and any retiree health), long-term care, home, auto, umbrella, any specialty policies. For each: insurer, policy number, what it covers in plain language, premium, beneficiary, the agent's contact.
The trick with insurance is that the policies themselves are dense PDFs that nobody reads. Drop the policy on the page; the agent makes it searchable. "What does my life insurance policy say about beneficiaries — primary and contingent — and is the contingent actually who I want it to be now?" The answer comes back grounded in the actual policy.
Property is similar. Deeds, titles, mortgages, any liens, any joint ownership arrangements. For real estate, the deed and current mortgage statement on a child page; for vehicles, the title and registration. For meaningful personal property — art, instruments, collections — a quick inventory with rough provenance and current location matters more than a formal appraisal for the gathering stage.
For digital property — domain names, websites you own, online accounts of meaningful sentimental or financial value — a separate child page with the basic facts. Many platforms have a legacy-contact or memorialization process; capture which platforms have which. (Personal legal matters short of estate work get their own walkthrough in Notes for Legal Documentation.)
Wishes that go beyond the will
The will handles the legal disposition. The wishes that go around it — funeral preferences, organ donation, specific requests about belongings, what to do with pets, what to tell people — usually don't fit cleanly into a legal document, and they often matter as much.
A Wishes page is the right shape. Plain prose, written the way you'd actually talk about it, without legal language. The agent doesn't structure this for you — your voice is the point.
Voice capture helps a lot here. Some of these conversations are easier spoken than typed. Tap record, talk for a few minutes, get a transcript with speaker labels (especially useful if you're recording with a partner present — "this is what we agreed about the cabin"). The transcript lands on the page; you can edit it later or leave it raw.
For pets, an Pet care child page with the routines, the vet's contact, the people who've agreed to take the animal, and any specific behavioral notes. The vet records guide we wrote up at /blog/ai-notes-pet-owners/ covers this in more depth.
A funeral / memorial page can be as detailed or as light as you want. Music. Religious or secular preferences. A guest list of people you'd want notified, with contact info. Whether you want a service at all. There's no right answer; there is a kindness in writing yours down.
A people page and the letters that go with it
A People page (or database) — who needs to be notified, in what order, with what relationship and contact info — is the kind of thing your executor will need on day one. Family. Close friends. Professional contacts (the attorney, the accountant, the financial advisor). The doctors who should be told.
For some people, you might want to write a letter. Not a legal letter — a personal one. Letters as a child page, one letter per recipient, written when you're calm and re-reviewed periodically. The agent doesn't write these for you; what it can do is help you start. "Help me draft a letter to my niece for the day she's old enough to read this — anchor it on what I've written about her in past journal entries on these pages, and keep the tone honest, not solemn." The draft comes back; you make it yours.
For an older parent doing this work for their children, or a grandparent for grandchildren, the Letters page is sometimes the part the family treasures most.
A status board and an annual review habit
The single most common failure mode for an estate plan isn't drafting it; it's letting it go stale. Marriage, divorce, new children, moves across state lines, new accounts, beneficiary changes — these all silently desync the plan from your life.
A Status page at the root of the parent — last full review date, what changed, what still needs attention, any pending tasks — keeps the work honest. Once a year (a reliable date — birthday, year-end, tax season) ask the agent to summarize what's changed since the last review. "Compare what's on these pages now to what they said at the last full review, and tell me what's drifted." The diff comes back; you have a small list of things to fix or call your attorney about.
The agent's web_search tool can help with the periodic reality checks. "What's the current federal estate tax exemption, and have any state estate-tax thresholds in [my state] changed in the last year?" Comes back with sources. You're not relying on the model's training cutoff; you're getting current info you can verify with your attorney.
A small, useful complement: a Where to find things note at the very top of the parent page. The physical location of the original signed will. The attorney's name and number. The bank where the safe deposit box is, if you have one. The location of any key papers not yet scanned. One screen, kept current. The first thing your executor reads.
A starter shape that respects how slowly this gets done
This work is rarely done in one sitting. The shape that works is one that lets you make small, unpressured progress.
- A single parent page — Estate planning — that you can find in your vault, ever.
- A Status note at the top — what's done, what's pending, when it was last reviewed.
- Child pages for Documents, Accounts, Insurance, Property, Wishes, People, and Letters.
- Inline databases for accounts and insurance — small, structured, easy to update.
- An annual review on a date you'll remember. Birthday, year-end, tax season — pick one.
That's it. No need to finish in a month. The vault is a place you can come back to. A page filled in this Sunday is more done than a perfect plan you keep meaning to start.
The point isn't to confront mortality on a schedule. It's that the people you love deserve a calmer experience than the one most families get when this work hasn't been done. The structure here stays small and stays in one place; the conversations and decisions stay yours.
Try Docapybara free — start with the Where to find things note and the account inventory, and the rest will follow on whichever Sunday you're up for it.