Introducing When I Am Gone, a New Digital Guide for Families

When someone dies, the family is left with two kinds of work. There is the legal estate — the will, the grant of probate, the accounts and taxes — and there is everything else: where the documents are kept, which accounts exist, who to call, what the house needs, and what the person would have wanted. The second kind of work is the one families are least prepared for, because it lives almost entirely in one person's memory.

When I Am Gone is a digital guide we are releasing soon to help with exactly that. It gives one person a structured, private place to record the practical information their family will need: where important documents are kept, account and contact details, household instructions, digital access notes, and personal wishes about the things a will does not cover. Families can then find what they need in one place, at the moment they need it, instead of searching drawers and guessing.

The guide grew directly out of our work in Edmonton-area homes. Again and again we meet executors and adult children spending their first weeks not grieving but hunting — for a policy, a password, a spare key, a name. A few hours of organized writing, done in advance, changes those weeks completely.

One thing must be said clearly: When I Am Gone is not a will, and it does not replace legal advice. It does not distribute property, name an executor, or create any legal obligation. Those matters belong with your lawyer, and nothing in the guide changes that. What it does is sit alongside proper legal planning and cover the practical, everyday information that legal documents were never designed to hold.

We will announce the release date here and in The Next Chapter newsletter. If you would like to be notified when When I Am Gone is available, join the newsletter below — subscribers will hear first.