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By Gareth Horsfall
This article is published on: 8th April 2026
Living in a foreign country is never easy, but have you thought how complicated it would be for your family if you die suddenly?
(Apologies for the subject matter around Easter, but if you are anything like me, I like to try and organise my annual tax paperwork for the commercialista around this time and so it is also a good moment to think about putting parts of your financial paperwork in order)
This article is one which I prepared years ago and have been sending out infrequently because on my travels and in the conversations I have, it is ever apparent that most people do not have all their financial paperwork in order in case anything happens to them.
Ensuring that your papers are in order in the event of your sudden death is incredibly important when living in another country. It will provide you with peace of mind that your loved ones will not have too much difficulty in administering your estate, and your family will be thankful that you did it for them.
The big problem is that we often have documents spread across multiple locations: the office, a house in another country, with family members and in that old box that no-one dares look in.
The purpose of this article is to outline a proven way of organizing your affairs to reduce stress on the family in the event of your death.
It is a single file (digital or physical) where you keep all of your important personal and financial information together. It allows easy access to these documents in the event that you are no longer around to deal with these things. It is really important to have it in place where one family member takes the lead on the family finances (as I do in our household). That includes paying bills, managing accounts and storing documents.
Well, I think it is worth the effort. I did mine a while ago and it gives me peace of mind more than anything else. I also told a few people about its location and left a note of who my wife should contact in the event of my death.. A time of loss can be stressful enough without having to try and piece the financial affairs together.
Preparing ‘THE’ folder is much more than avoiding stress as well. If you leave behind an administrative nightmare you could also delay access to the inheritors’ funds and potentially cost a small fortune in legal fees.
To give you an example of this, the UK Department of Work and Pensions estimate that there is currently more than £400 million sitting in unclaimed pension pots in the UK.
Approximately 1 in 7 Americans are estimated to have unclaimed property, such as forgotten bank accounts, insurance proceeds, or unclaimed inheritances
This comes down to personal preference. It can be done by either creating an electronic file that survivors can access in the event of death. This file can then be stored on your main computer, in the cloud or on an external hard drive. Alternatively you can use a physical folder to keep all of the important information together.
For what it’s worth, I decided to do both when building mine because my wife prefers paper and so is happier with hard copies of everything. I prefer digital. I have also shared the digital folder with some trusted family members.
Birth, marriage and divorce
You can download free copies of your Italian documents, and copies with the ‘bollo’ (for €16) from the Italian national register website, here: https://www.anagrafenazionale.interno.it/ You will need to access it with your SPID or CIE.
Gifts which have been made many years ago can be hard to track down and so it’s important that when you make a gift to a family member or anyone else, that you keep a copy of the bank statement showing the amount paid, on what date and to whom.
If you made a larger gift, in Italy, then it will likely have been made through a notaio and so paperwork should be available. Keep these documents safe.
(so they can be maintained if necessary or cancelled if not. Essentially list the fixed costs which would need to continue after death)
Firstly, it is sensible to note the date that it was last reviewed so that anyone using it has an idea of how up-to-date the details are.
Going forward, reviewing the file on an annual basis should be sufficient.
I think it’s safe to say that this is the most problematic part of the whole process because we have so many passwords nowadays and need to change them all the time.
f you are not comfortable keeping these in your hard copy folder, consider using a password management program. A password manager allows you to save all account usernames and passwords in one place. They are then protected using one master key. There are a number of them available. Don’t forget to leave note of how to access the password manager though!
This may, however, be a step too far for you given the data breaches that seem to happen often and I appreciate that and if you are not comfortable in using such an app then its important to have a physical record some where that can be accessed in the event of your death.
This may seem like common sense but our lives now revolve around our phones and so ensuring that you leave details of not just your password to access the phone / PIN or line drawing shape, but also the PIN or access codes when the phone has been switched off AND your PUK code in the event that they get blocked out. If you use fingerprint authentication then you may also want to ensure that you leave open another access possibility, such as the PIN so that the phone can be opened without the need for your fingerprint, when that is no longer possible.
As per the above, do the same for your computer.
It’s probably worth a note about your SPID (Sistema Pubblico di identità digitale) and / or your CIE ( carta d’identità abilitata). These are digital identities accessed via apps and are now arguably some of the most important phone apps to access important financial and legal information held by the Italian state and therefore ensuring that you leave details of your passwords to access the apps could help your beneficiaries resolve estate issues without needing to engage or financial professionals to communicate with the various agencies on your behalf and at great cost.
Lastly, be sure to tell someone about it. There is little point going to the effort of creating such a folder if no one knows of its existence / where to find it.
