How to Find Estate Documents: A Practical Search Guide

When someone dies, their financial life doesn’t announce itself. Accounts, policies, deeds, and obligations exist across dozens of institutions, and unless the person left a clear inventory, the executor’s first real task is detective work.

This guide is a systematic approach to finding what you need — organised so you can work through it methodically instead of feeling like you’re missing something.

Start with a Central Place to Work

Before you begin searching, set up one location — a box, a binder, a folder on your computer — where everything goes. You’ll be handling documents from many sources over many months, and having a single place to put them saves enormous frustration later.

Also start a simple running list: institution, account type, contact information, and status. This becomes the backbone of your estate inventory.

The Documents You’ll Need Most

These are the ones that unlock everything else:

Certified death certificates. Nearly every institution requires one. Most executors need five to ten copies. Your funeral director orders these for you — at Alternatives, we handle this as part of the arrangement process.

The original will. Required for the probate application. See our guides on finding a will and determining whether it’s valid.

Social Insurance Number. Needed for CRA filings, CPP applications, and pension notifications.

Government ID. Passport, driver’s licence, BC Services Card. These need to be cancelled and are useful for identity verification.

Marriage certificate or proof of common-law relationship. Required for spousal benefits and survivor pensions.

Birth certificate. Occasionally needed to establish relationships.

Where to Look, Room by Room

The filing cabinet or desk. The obvious starting point, and often the productive one. Look for anything labelled with an institution’s name.

A home safe or fireproof box. Many people keep the will, deeds, and insurance policies here.

Bedroom drawers, closets, and under the bed. Older generations frequently kept documents in bedroom furniture rather than an office.

The freezer, cookie tins, and books. This sounds like a joke. It isn’t. Cash, jewellery, and documents turn up in these places regularly.

The garage, basement, or storage locker. Vehicle titles, older tax records, and boxes of financial history.

Follow the Mail — It’s Your Best Tool

For the first several months, the deceased’s mail is the single most reliable way to discover accounts you didn’t know about. Statements, renewal notices, tax slips, and dividend cheques all arrive on their own schedule.

Do not stop the mail immediately. Redirect it to yourself as executor so you can review it. Canada Post offers a mail redirection service specifically for this. See our guide to redirecting mail after a death.

Watch particularly for:

Bank and investment statements
Insurance renewal notices
Property tax and utility bills
T-slips arriving in February and March
Pension and annuity statements
Credit card statements

Tax season is genuinely useful here — T3, T4A, and T5 slips reveal accounts and income sources that may not appear anywhere else.

Use the Tax Return as a Map

The deceased’s most recent income tax return is one of the most efficient documents you’ll find. It reveals:

Every source of reported income (employment, pension, investment, rental)
Financial institutions that issued tax slips
RRSP and RRIF holdings
Charitable donations, which may indicate ongoing commitments
Whether they had an accountant — and who

If you can’t find a copy, you can request records from the CRA once you have authority as the legal representative.

Check the Digital Trail

Email. Search the inbox for terms like “statement,” “policy,” “account,” “invoice,” “renewal,” and the names of major banks and insurers. Many institutions have moved entirely to electronic statements.

Computer files. Look for spreadsheets, scanned documents, and folders with names like “financial,” “important,” or “estate.”

Password manager. If the person used one, it may contain a complete list of their financial relationships. Access can be legally complicated — see our guide to online accounts after death.

Browser bookmarks. Bookmarked login pages point directly to institutions.

Banking apps on their phone. Often the fastest way to see which institutions they dealt with.

Institution-Specific Searches

Bank accounts. Contact every institution you have evidence of. If you suspect an account exists at a bank but can’t confirm, most will search their records with a death certificate and proof of your authority.

Safety deposit boxes. Look for annual rental charges on bank statements — this is usually how families discover a box exists.

Life insurance. Check for premium payments in banking records, policies in the filing cabinet, and coverage through employers, professional associations, unions, and credit cards. Employer group life is the most commonly missed.

Pensions. Former employers, union pension plans, and professional association plans. Check the employment history on the tax return.

Investment accounts. Brokerage statements, robo-advisor accounts, and any T5 or T3 slips.

Real property. For BC property, the Land Title and Survey Authority can confirm ownership and registered charges. Property tax notices confirm municipal holdings.

Vehicles. ICBC records confirm registered ownership.

CRA My Account. Once you’re registered as legal representative, this gives you access to tax history, RRSP room, and slips filed under the deceased’s SIN.

Don’t Forget Debts and Obligations

The estate is responsible for what’s owed, so the search has to include liabilities:

Mortgages and lines of credit
Credit cards, including store cards
Personal loans and car financing
Outstanding taxes
Unpaid medical or care facility bills
Ongoing subscriptions and memberships

A credit report from Equifax and TransUnion will reveal most credit obligations in one step. As executor, you can request one with a death certificate and proof of your authority — and you should, both to find debts and to protect against fraud.

Look for Assets Nobody Knew About

Dormant accounts, forgotten investments, and unclaimed balances are more common than people expect. See our full guide to finding unclaimed assets in Canada — but at minimum, search the BC Unclaimed Property Society and the Bank of Canada’s unclaimed balances registry.

Talk to the People Who Knew Them

The accountant. If there was one, they may have the clearest picture of the person’s financial life.

The financial advisor. Often holds a consolidated view of investments and insurance.

The lawyer or notary. May hold the will, deeds, or records of prior transactions.

The insurance broker. Knows what policies existed.

Long-time friends and colleagues. Sometimes know about a property, a business interest, or an account the family didn’t.

A Realistic Timeline

Most executors find the bulk of what they need in the first two to three months, with stragglers appearing through the first tax season. Don’t assume you’ve found everything at the six-week mark — hold off on final distribution until at least one full tax cycle has passed and you’re confident the picture is complete.

This is one of the most common executor mistakes: distributing the estate, then discovering a debt or a tax liability afterward. As executor, you can be held personally liable.

We Handle the First Piece

At Alternatives Funeral & Cremation Services, we take care of the documentation that everything else depends on — coordinating the Medical Certificate of Death, registering the death with BC Vital Statistics, and ordering the certified death certificates you’ll need for every institution on this list.

If you’re at the beginning of this process and feeling buried, we’re happy to help you understand the sequence of what comes next.

Learn more at myalternatives.ca

This article provides general information for executors in British Columbia. For advice about a specific estate, consult a qualified estate lawyer or accountant.