A plan, not a map

The family handover kit — filled in, not blank.

Name: The Family Handover Kit
Brand: Valoren
SKU: SHB-001
Price: 29.00 GBP
Availability: InStock

A will says who gets what. It cannot tell the people you love what to do, in what order, or who to write to first.

Answer twenty-four questions — five of them required, the rest skippable — and we write it up around your actual banks, your actual people and your actual will.

Pay once and the questions come to you by email — at your own pace, and the link doesn't expire. Read through by a person, back within one business day of your answers, ready to print and put where your family will find it. Your printed copy follows in the post — allow up to 10 working days; it's usually sooner.

Start your handover kit — £29

One payment. 30-day money-back. Nothing to sign up for to read it.

Behind this page sits the working library it draws on — 33 records, 79 form walkthroughs, 90+ free guides, all free to read.

Sorting an estate right now? →There's a free template — see it first →Keep it current every year — The Household Continuity Dossier →Want it handled for you? Signum, our own specialist desk →

The Living Edition · one household's own pages

Opened once, by hand — then read, page by page.

The Accounts & Policies register from the Living Edition.

A notification letter from the Living Edition, addressed to the fictional household's own bank and ready to sign.

The deadline calendar from the Living Edition.

An A4 sheet from the Living Edition carrying six copies of the emergency card, each with crop marks, to print and cut out.

The dark cover of the Living Edition, prepared for a fictional household.

Open the pack

specimen · fictional household — the Pemberton-Walsh household is invented; every page is the production builder's real output

Most people with a will believe their affairs are in order. Most families discover they are not.

The will was the easy part. Everything it assumes — the records, the contacts, the access, the instructions — is the part nobody built.

A handover kit is not a legal document and doesn't replace one. It's the practical layer underneath: what to do, who to call, where everything is, written down before it's needed. Not just for the elderly or the ill. For anyone whose family would otherwise be guessing.

Families call it different things — a death file, an 'if I die' folder, an estate handover kit. The name matters far less than the contents: the same seven parts, below, whatever the folder is called.

A six-question check

Answer these as your family would have to.

Six of the twenty-four questions the Kit asks. Answer them in your head, as the person who would one day have to find everything. Nothing is recorded, nothing is sent, there is no box to fill in.

Who should your family call first — and do they have the number?
Where are the important papers kept, and who else can actually get to them?
Is there a will — and does anyone besides you know where it is?
Which banks, which pensions, which insurers? All of them, not most.
If your phone were locked tomorrow, how would anyone reach what's on it?
Burial or cremation — and is that written down anywhere but in your head?

If you hesitated on even one, that's the thing your family would be hunting for.

Not because they aren't capable — because the answer was only ever in your head.

How it works

Three steps, and only one of them is yours.

Step one

You answer the questions

A short set of questions about your household — who to call first, where the will is, which banks and policies exist. Answer what you know; skip anything you would rather not put in writing.

The guided question screen open on a phone — answer what you know, skip the rest.

Step two

We write it up for your household

Your answers become your household's own pages — who to call first, the seven parts written up, and the dates your family would be working to. Written around your actual banks, your actual people and your actual will, and read through by a person before it comes back to you.

The seven parts written up on a laptop, the phone beside it

Step three

It comes back ready to hand over

Your household's own pages, written up and ready to print — the Start Here page, the seven parts, the dates, and a plain list of anything still to gather — to put somewhere the people who love you would actually look.

The design it comes back in

Filled in, not blank. The handover pack.

Most kits like this are a blank template — boxes for you to fill in yourself. This is the design Valoren prepares documents in: the cover, the section covers, the registers, the letters addressed to a household's own banks and insurers, the calendar of its dates, the cards for the first night.

Thirteen pieces, shown for a household that does not exist. Everything below is a specimen, not a real customer's records.

Your £29 Kit comes back as the opening pages of exactly this design — the Start Here page, the seven parts, your dates. The full pack — The Living Edition — is what The Household Continuity Dossier households are sent once their own records are ready for it: emailed to you directly, every piece attached, prepared from what you've already written down.

The dark cover of the Living Edition, prepared for the Pemberton-Walsh household.

The Manifest sheet from the Living Edition: every numbered piece the pack holds, listed in order.

The Trusted Person Protocol from the Living Edition: who is authorised to act, and how they prove it.

The Who to Call sheet from the Living Edition: the people who act for this household, in calling order.

The Where Everything Is register from the Living Edition: documents and keys — original, copy, and the route to each.

A notification letter from the Living Edition, addressed to the fictional household's own bank and ready to sign — no envelope promised, the return address prints on the acknowledgement card instead.

A notification letter from the Living Edition, addressed to the fictional household's own insurer with the policy references filled in, ready to sign.

A notification letter from the Living Edition, addressed to the fictional household's own pension provider with the plan references filled in, ready to sign.

The Certificate Order Sheet from the Living Edition: each certified death certificate copy with a job, a date out and a date home.

The Home Panel from the Living Edition: keys, stopcock, boiler, and the empty-home insurance rule.

The Pets Panel from the Living Edition: who feeds them, what they eat, and the vet.

CoverThe cover1 / 21

the cover, the section covers, and their pieces · specimen, fictional household

The £29 Family Handover Kit is the opening set of pages — the seven parts, written up from your answers (its own pages are beside the checkout below). The Household Continuity Dossier is the whole household record, kept alive: all 33 records, the will, the documents your records prepare, the release on the day.

Between the two sits The Family Handover File, £49 — the Kit plus your own institution letters: one ready-to-sign notification letter for each bank, insurer and pension you name, each with its acknowledgement card, and the six-month calendar computed from your own dates.

Read them full size: the cover · the letter · a register · the calendar

In your pocket

The part that leaves the shelf.

Six copies on one cut-out sheet — one for everyone who would be called, one for a wallet, one by the telephone.

specimen · fictional household

The Family Handover Kit

£29one payment · nothing recurring

Written up from your answers and read through by a person before it is sent. Emailed as a finished PDF within one business day, with The Handover Guide — its 19-page companion, free to read first — alongside; and printed on archival stock and posted to you in a wallet, with the Start Here card. Read the Guide first — it's free.

If anything comes back wrong, tell us and we'll put it right. And if it still isn't right, the £29 comes back — 30-day money-back.

If you later take The Household Continuity Dossier within 30 days, the £29 counts in full toward it — same email at checkout, applies by itself.

No account, no password. Twenty-four questions — five required, the rest skippable — saved as you go on this device. Anything you skip is left out and named as a gap, never guessed at.

Where our reviews will come from

No rating is quoted on this page yet, because we will not borrow one. Every review we ever show will be from a paying customer, invited by email after delivery, offered nothing in return — and the rating and the count will be Trustpilot's own figures, never ours. Until then, the specimen below is the evidence: read the actual pages before you decide.

A laptop open to the £29 Kit's Start Here page, in a document-reader view, with four covers standing beside it naming the Kit's own sections: the cover, Start Here, the seven parts, the clock.

specimen · fictional household — four of the £29 Kit's own pages: the cover, Start Here, the seven parts, the clock

The same prepared pages, printed and kept — a stacked specimen of the £29 Kit's pages against a plain background, no screen involved.

specimen · fictional household — the same pages, printed and kept

What happens next

You pay £29. No account to create, no password to remember.

We email you a short set of questions about your household — around ten minutes, saved as you go. Take as long as you like: your kit is paid for and reserved, and the link doesn't expire.

Your brief is written up, read through by a person, and delivered to your inbox within one business day of those answers arriving. Your printed copy follows in the post — allow up to 10 working days; it's usually sooner.

30-day money-back on The Family Handover Kit.

One payment, nothing recurring. Your statutory right to cancel under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 runs for 14 days and ends once preparation begins — Valoren’s 30-day money-back is longer, voluntary, and applies either way.

What's actually inside a real handover kit

A folder of paperwork is not a handover. A handover answers questions, in the order a family actually asks them — miss any one and the people left behind aren't administering, they're investigating.

Who to call first. One named person, with a phone number that works. Everything else waits; this doesn't.

Where things are kept. The drawer, the safe, the solicitor's office — named, not assumed.

The legal position. Whether a will exists and where. Whether a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) is registered — and for what.

The medical essentials. GP, medications, allergies. The questions a hospital asks in the first hour.

The financial picture. Which banks, which policies, which pensions — names, not balances. Enough to notify, not enough to steal.

Digital access. The recovery routes for email and phone. Without these, half of modern life is simply locked.

Funeral wishes. Burial or cremation, whether a plan is already paid for, and where fuller wishes are written down. One decision the family never has to make blind.

Everything above is an output of the same household record, entered once. On Valoren, these aren't six separate chores — they're six views of one set of records, kept in your household dossier, printable as a single Start Here page your family can hold in their hands.

The checklist

Take the checklist with you.

Everything a complete family handover kit contains — the seven parts, the deadlines they answer to, and the details each one needs — as a printable checklist your family can hold. Sent to your inbox now.

Free. No account. Fill it in over an afternoon.

The deadlines your family will be working against

A handover kit isn't a keepsake — it's built against a real clock. In England and Wales the first legal deadline arrives within days of a death, and the rest follow whether or not anyone is ready. This is the timeline a good kit has to answer to.

Within 5 days of ME confirmation

The death must be registered.

Once the medical examiner's office confirms you can register, the registrar offers Tell Us Once, which notifies most government departments in a single step — but only if the person registering has the details to hand: National Insurance number, driving licence, passport. A kit that lists these turns an hour of searching into a five-minute appointment.

The first weeks

Banks, insurers and pension providers each need notifying.

Without a list of which institutions exist, families notify the ones they know about and miss the ones they don't. The pension that can't be found. The account nobody knew about. These things don't happen because people didn't care — they happen because nobody had it written down.

Probate, if needed

The application is form PA1P (with a will) or PA1A (without).

The application fee is £526. Most of the work of applying is assembling information — exactly the information a handover kit already holds.

Inheritance Tax

Where IHT is due, interest starts accruing six months after the end of the month of death.

Families working from complete records meet that window. Families reconstructing an estate from a shoebox often don't.

The pattern in every one of these deadlines is the same. The task itself is rarely hard — finding the information under pressure is. A handover kit moves that work from the worst possible week to an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, done calmly, in advance, by the one person who knows all the answers: you.

The deadlines and fees on this page are for England and Wales — Scotland and Northern Ireland have different rules, as does the Republic of Ireland.

III

Why a living record beats a printed folder

The folder

Something is always better than nothing. A ring binder in the study, honestly kept, puts a family miles ahead of the average. If a folder is what you'll actually maintain, make the folder — this page tells you what goes in it.

But paper has one quiet failure mode: it's correct on the day you print it, and it only drifts from there. A bank account closes. A solicitor retires. An LPA finally gets registered. A phone number changes.

Nobody reprints the folder — the family that opens it in five years' time acts on five-year-old facts. A handover kit is only as good as its worst stale page.

The living record

This is the actual case for keeping the kit as a living record. On Valoren, the handover isn't a document you made once — it's a view of records you keep current, with an annual review to catch the drift, and a printed Start Here page you can reprint any time the facts change.

When someone has to step in, everything is ready. They act, not investigate.

In their words

What early households say

Valoren is Great!

Valoren has made it very convenient and simple to do something extremely valuable that I had no idea how to accomplish otherwise. The benefits to my family will be wonderful.

Jim Bonfield · UK

Early user — known to the founder

on free PDF resources

We are early in our Valoren journey but I cannot express how much I am loving it. Having these memories recording by my mum is that something I will cherish and share with my daughters. I look forward to every recording and the process of using the platform has been remarkable intuitive and easy.

Jennifer Schumacher

Early user — known to the founder

on sealed messages

Family handover kit reviews — and what we can show you today

Valoren is new, and we publish nothing we can't stand behind — no star ratings, no invented testimonials. What we can give you is transparency: who builds this, what's actually inside it, the terms in plain English, and a way to check every claim for yourself.

Who builds it.

Valoren is built and run from the UK by Standard Index Group — with a founder on record, and an about page that says plainly what exists today and what doesn't yet.

Read the about page

What's actually inside.

No mystery box. The template page shows the kit's structure page by page, free — and everything pictured on this page is the real artefact: the checklist, the card, the screen your person opens.

See what's inside

The guarantee, in plain terms.

A 14-day full refund window on the subscription. Cancellation is two clicks — no phone call, no exit interview — and your records stay exportable indefinitely after you cancel.

See pricing and terms

The reviews themselves.

None published yet — and we won't invent any. Collection is under way: households who have used the kit can share their experience, and when one consents to publication it appears on this page, named. Until then, judge us on what you can check.

Share your experience

Keeping it true — the kit, kept alive, with the will

A kit is right on the day it is written. The Household Continuity Dossier is the same seven parts kept as a living record — the will included — with three mechanisms that keep it true and hand it over on the day.

Compose.

In The Household Continuity Dossier, your answers become your records — all 33 of them — and your records compose the documents: the Start Here page, re-drawn whenever the facts change; the documents your records prepare; and the will, included, with Will Watch on it. Entered once, kept in one place.

Watch.

Will Watch checks your will every week. Companies House is watched for any company you record. Once a year we ask what changed — you keep it current; we make sure you're asked — and the person you named is asked too: still willing, still reachable.

Release.

You name the person who'd step in. If the day comes, they confirm it; you have 24 hours to refuse; a person reviews it; and the handover opens to them in stages — a link, not a login — with what you chose to share, including the sealed messages you left for them.

All of it is The Household Continuity Dossier — £195 first year, then £99/yr.

The will alone is £149; the Dossier is £46 more.

Renewal is about £8.25 a month to keep the whole household's continuity awake.

And if you start with the £29 Kit, the £29 counts in full toward it within 30 days.

Get The Household Continuity Dossier — £195

The one-screen handover view a trusted person opens.

The handover — what your person sees

First page of the Family Handover Kit checklist.

The complete checklist

Who to call, on one card

The page a trusted recipient opens when a sealed message is released.

A message, held until it's time

every piece is real · the checklist, the card, the screen your person opens once the handover is released

Everything the membership holds

All 33 records

A straightforward will — included (partner's mirror £70)

Will Watch — weekly staleness alerts on your will

Your Valoren Advisor — included, on every record and form

Trusted Persons Protocol — a printed card with a no-login QR to the activation door, plus an annual "still willing, still reachable" check

Sealed, scheduled and time-capsule messages — unlimited, with an annual review nudge

Document preparation — your records compose the documents

Companies House watch — weekly, on any company you record

Cross-border panel — residency, overseas assets and the IHT position, flagged

Branded share-links — expiring, audit-logged

Unlimited vault uploads, watermark-free documents

Annual review prompts — you keep it current; we make sure you're asked

14-day full refund window

Form Help included — every walkthrough, box by box

Compared, row by row — and priced against the alternatives

Three shapes this category comes in — a free workbook, a PDF kit you print, a printed planner — beside the Kit, row by row, each one checkable. Then the £195, against what the same parts cost bought separately, and against what your family would otherwise pay to reconstruct it.

The honest comparison

What a family handover kit usually is — and what this one is.

Every kit in this category does the same job — who to call, where things are, what falls due. The difference is who does the work, whether anyone checks it, and what arrives. Every cell below is something you can check for yourself.

	A free workbook	A PDF kit you print	A printed planner	The Family Handover Kit
Filled in for you?	No — you write it in by hand.	No — download, print, fill it in.	No — blank pages to complete.	Yes — written up from twenty-four questions you answer in one sitting.
Checked by a person before it reaches you?	No.	No — an instant download.	No.	Yes — read by a person before it is sent.
Who you still have to tell	A blank list to complete.	A blank list to complete.	Blank pages to complete.	Your own banks, insurers and pensions, named on the page — each with a column to date as you tell them.
Sections you don't need	Printed anyway, left blank.	Printed anyway, left blank.	Printed anyway, left blank.	Left out — the home, the pets and dependants appear only if you have them.
Cards to carry	None.	None.	Blank tags, in some.	Cut-out cards, already filled in, for a wallet or a drawer.
How it arrives	Posted, free, as a blank booklet.	On your own printer.	In the post, blank.	Emailed in one business day with the 19-page Guide, and printed & posted.
How fast	Days to weeks (posted).	Immediately — because nothing was written.	Days (posted).	Within one business day.
Kept current afterwards?	Only if you rewrite it.	Only if you re-print it.	Only if you re-write it.	The Kit is a snapshot. The Household Continuity Dossier keeps it current and includes the will.
Price	Free.	About £15–£29; bundles to about £76.	About £30–£45.	£29, one-off. The £29 comes off the Dossier's first year if you move up within 30 days.
If it isn't right	—	Typically 14–30 days money back; check the seller.	Retailer's returns policy.	30-day money-back.

The category, by shape of product — no single seller is named; prices are the published ranges seen on 21 August 2026.

Facts checked · 21 August 2026 · re-check monthlySee what we can show you, not just say →

The same parts, bought separately

A straightforward will, written online

£60–£150

Included in the Dossier — with Will Watch staleness alerts on it, weekly. A partner's mirror will is £70.

A records vault, maintained year-round

£36–£120 / yr

All 33 records and unlimited uploads are in the Dossier — and the £99 renewal itself sits inside this band.

A fill-in handover kit

£15–£76 one-off

Printed estate organisers and fill-in kits sell as blank forms you complete yourself. The Dossier composes yours from your records, with a printed Start Here page you can re-draw whenever the facts change.

Sealed messages, held for release

No priced equivalent

Unlimited sealed, scheduled and time-capsule messages, held for release to the people you name.

Assembled separately, in year one

≈ £110–£350

The Household Continuity Dossier is £195 first year — £46 more than the will alone — then £99/yr. One place, one renewal, and the parts talk to each other.

The price, against the alternatives

A charity's free planning workbook

Free

Genuinely good, and right on the day it's filled in — but nothing prompts a review, so it quietly drifts from true.

A US records-vault subscription

about $100 a year

The going rate for a maintained digital record — which is what the £99 renewal is priced at. Year one's £195 adds the built kit itself: the dossier, the printed Start Here page, the Trusted Persons setup.

Reconstructing it cold, after the fact

£200–£450/hr + VAT

Solicitor time, paid by your family, to rebuild what was never written down — months of it, instead of one sitting now.

Every price on one page

Common questions

Tell us. Your kit is read through by a person before it's sent, but you know your household best — if a detail is off, reply to the delivery email and it's corrected and re-issued. No charge, no forms.

And if it still isn't right, the £29 comes back under the 30-day money-back.

A will is a legal document that says who inherits. A handover kit is a practical one: who to call, where things are, what to do first.

The will disposes of the estate; the kit lets your family actually run the first weeks. Neither replaces the other — a household in good order has both, drawn from the same set of records.

No. It grants no legal authority and needs no formalities — a registered LPA or a grant of probate is what confers authority.

The kit's job is different: it shows the people acting where those legal instruments are and what to do while they get them.

Write it down anyway. Memory is at its least reliable exactly when the kit is needed — under grief, under deadline, at 2am.

"Mum banks with the one on the high street" is not an answer a bank accepts. The kit isn't for the day everything is normal; it's for the week nothing is.

Yes — same job, different name. Some families search for an estate handover kit, some for a family handover kit; the thing itself is the organised, actionable record your family will need: where everything is, who to contact, what happens in the first days.

This page describes what a complete one contains — and the difference between a folder of locations and a plan your family can act on.

Yes. An 'if I die' folder, an in-case-of-death folder, a family handover kit — different names, one job: the things your family would need written down, kept where they'd look.

Whatever you call yours, a complete one holds the same seven parts — who to call first, where things are kept, the legal position, the medical essentials, the financial picture, digital access and funeral wishes. The free checklist on this page covers all seven; print it, fill it in, and your folder is started.

No — a death file is the same thing by a blunter name: one findable place holding what your family would need when you die. The will's location, the people to ring, the accounts to notify, the instructions. If you're building one, the seven parts on this page are the contents list.

And the detail that matters more than the name: a death file nobody knows exists fails at its one job. Tell someone where it is.

Yes — free, on this page. The checklist above covers everything a complete kit contains: the seven parts, the deadlines they answer to, and the details each one needs.

Print it, fill it in by hand over an afternoon, and keep it where your family would look. If you'd rather it done for you as a one-off — from what you tell us, delivered within one business day — that's the Family Handover Kit, £29. If you'd rather it maintained itself, year after year, that's what The Household Continuity Dossier is for. See a full preview of what's inside on the template page →.

Yes — and a folder honestly kept puts your family miles ahead of most. Use the checklist on this page as the template: seven parts, written down, kept where they'd look.

The one thing a homemade kit can't do by itself is stay current — facts drift, and nobody reprints the folder. However you keep it, put a date on it and review it once a year.

The honest answer: don't hand over the passwords themselves. Sharing raw passwords breaches most providers' terms and creates risk while you're both alive — and a written list is stale the first time one changes. Never put passwords in your will: a will becomes a public document once probate is granted.

What actually works is setting up the official routes now — a legacy contact on your Apple account, Google's Inactive Account Manager, your password manager's emergency access — and recording which accounts exist and which email anchors them. Banks never need your credentials at all: your executor notifies them with a death certificate and each bank runs its own bereavement process.

That map — what exists, and where the recovery routes are — is what the kit's digital access part holds. Deliberately, no passwords.

Sometimes it isn't, so start with the honest comparison. Age UK's LifeBook is a genuinely good free workbook — six sections covering personal details, contacts, financial information, documents, possessions and final wishes — and Age UK will even post a printed copy free on request (their advice line is 0800 678 1602). If a fill-it-in-once workbook is what your household needs, use it; the free checklist on this page does the same job.

What The Household Continuity Dossier — £195 first year, then £99 a year — pays for is the one thing no workbook can do: staying true. Your records in one place, a Start Here page you can re-draw whenever the facts change, sealed letters, the trusted person link, release on the day — and an annual review, because you keep it current and we make sure you're asked. A workbook is right on the day it's filled in, and drifts from there.

There's a 30-day money-back on the £29 Family Handover Kit, and a 14-day full refund window on the Dossier. If a subscription is more than you want, the one-off ladder underneath runs £29 → £79 → £179, from the Family Handover Kit to the Executor's First Hour, with no renewal on any of them.

And any of them counts in full toward the Dossier's first year if you move up within 30 days — nothing you start with is wasted.

None published yet — and we won't invent any. Valoren is new, and a rating we haven't earned tells you nothing. Collection is under way: households who have used the kit can share their experience, and when someone consents to publication it appears on this page, named.

Until then the honest answer is to judge us on what you can check rather than on what we say about ourselves — what's actually inside (the template page shows the structure, free), who builds it (UK-based, founder on record, and an about page that says plainly what exists today and what doesn't yet), and the terms — a 30-day money-back, one payment with nothing recurring, no cancellation to make.

If your household needs more than a kit

Where the boundary is reached, Valoren refers.

Most families never need more than the kit — the records, the named people, the printed Start Here page. Some do: a will that needs a trust, lasting powers of attorney to draft and register, a business or a farm to pass on, an estate close to the inheritance-tax threshold. This is where we are straightforward about the two routes to that help — one of them is ours, and we say so.

Signum · Valoren's own specialist desk

Have Signum look at it

Signum is part of Valoren — our own service, and we say so plainly. Where a household stops being simple — a trust to draft, both powers of attorney prepared and registered, a gifting plan with the seven-year clock mapped, foreign property — Signum carries it: handled by in-house regulated specialists and coordinated through named regulated professionals, with the scope agreed before any fee is. It starts with a free intake, and if we are not the right fit for your estate, we will tell you so and point you at the directories below.

valoren.uk/services →↗

Prefer an independent adviser?

The Law Society · Public directory

Find a Solicitor

The Law Society of England & Wales — regulated solicitors. Searchable by postcode and area of practice. Best fit for full-service estate administration where IHT400 submission, cross-border assets, or contested points are involved.

solicitors.lawsociety.org.uk →↗

STEP · Public directory

Find a Trust and Estate Practitioner

Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners — the professional body for trust and estate work in the UK. Members hold the TEP credential after rigorous examination. Best fit when trusts, cross-border estates, or complex succession structures are involved.

step.org →↗

Signum is Valoren's own desk — when you instruct Signum, you are instructing us, and this page tells you so rather than dressing it up as an independent recommendation. Neither the Law Society nor STEP pays Valoren a referral fee, and we pass your details to no one: the directories are listed so that the independent route is always one click away.