The backup plan: what someone needs to know if you are suddenly unavailable

The gap nobody plans for

Ask yourself one question and answer it honestly. If you were unreachable from tomorrow morning for five days, who would know that the pharmacy delivers on Tuesdays, that the aide's shift changes on Thursday, that the alarm code is not the one written on the fridge, and that the invoice for the care agency is due on the fifteenth?

In most families the honest answer is nobody.

This is not a morbid exercise and it is not about anything dramatic. The most common versions are entirely ordinary: a bout of flu, a work trip that cannot move, a broken wrist, a child's emergency, a car that dies two hundred miles away.

The fix is a single document and a named person, and it takes an evening. Do it once and update it twice a year, alongside the other reviews. It also, quietly, makes the day-to-day easier, because a document that explains the week to somebody else explains it to you too. Most people who write it discover two or three things nobody else in the family knew at all.

Name the person, then actually ask them

Pick a primary backup and a second backup. Then ask them, out loud, and write down the date they said yes.

Assuming a sibling will step in is not a plan. People have their own weeks, and the difference between an assumption and an agreement becomes obvious at exactly the wrong moment.

When you ask, be specific about what you are asking for. Not open-ended care. One week. These tasks. This document. A phone call from you first if it can be arranged, and if it cannot, this envelope.

The second backup matters as much as the first, because the flu that takes you out often takes out the person you live with too. Where possible, make the second backup someone geographically separate: a cousin, a neighbor, a friend of your parent's, or the care agency itself.

Write both names, both phone numbers, and both email addresses on the front of the document. Then give each of them a copy, and tell them where the full binder is kept. A backup who has never seen the document is a name, not a plan.

The one-page cover sheet

One page, at the front, written for somebody who is arriving cold. Assume they know nothing and are reading it in a hurry.

What goes on it: who you are and what you do for your parent, in three lines. Your parent's full legal name, date of birth and address. Where the binder is, physically. The five things that must happen in the first twenty-four hours. The order of people to call, with numbers. And the one sentence about what is not theirs to decide, with the name and number of who decides it instead.

Keep the whole thing to a page. Two pages get skimmed and a page gets read.

Write it in plain instructions rather than context. Not "she usually gets her prescriptions from the pharmacy on Union Street", but "Call Union Street Pharmacy on this number. Ask them to confirm the delivery for Tuesday." The person reading it does not need the history, they need the next action.

Put the date at the top. Then put a printed copy in the binder, one with each backup, and a photograph of it in your own phone.

• Who you are and what you do, in three lines
• Parent's full legal name, date of birth, address
• Where the binder physically is
• The five things that must happen in the first 24 hours
• Who to call, in order, with numbers
• What is not theirs to decide, and who decides it
• The date the sheet was last updated

The first 72 hours: what must not lapse

Most of what you do can wait a week. A short list cannot, and that list is the real content of the handover.

Work through your own calendar and bank statements for the last two months and pull out anything with a deadline or a delivery attached. Typically: the pharmacy arrangement and the day it arrives; the care agency's shift schedule and their office number; any appointment in the next two weeks, with the number to call to move it; the pet; a standing invoice such as rent, care fees or a mortgage, and the date it falls due; anything on auto-pay that would fail if a card were reissued; and the door code.

For each item write three things: what it is, when it happens, and the phone number that fixes it.

Add the ones that are invisible from outside: the neighbor who checks in on Sundays, the friend who calls on Wednesdays and would raise the alarm if nobody answered, and the day the trash goes out.

Then mark anything on the list that is safe to simply skip for a week. Being explicit about what can be dropped is as valuable as the list itself.

• Pharmacy arrangement and delivery day
• Care agency schedule and office number
• Appointments in the next two weeks, with numbers to move them
• Pet: food, routine, vet
• Invoices with a due date in the period
• Auto-pay items that would fail on a reissued card
• Door code, alarm code, key holders
• What is safe to skip entirely for a week

Access, and the limits of it

Two halves to this, and they must both be written down.

Access. Where the keys are and who holds a set. The door and alarm codes. Where the binder lives. Which phone receives verification codes for accounts, and what happens if that phone is with you in a hospital rather than in the house. Which neighbor can let somebody in. Where the emergency cash is, if there is any.

Limits. Be equally explicit about what your backup is not authorized to do. Ask an attorney what your parent's documents actually permit, who may act for them and in what circumstances, and write the answer on the sheet in plain words with the attorney's name and number underneath.

This protects everybody. A backup who tries to act beyond their authority creates a problem; a backup who has it written down that a particular thing goes to a named attorney or to a named sibling simply makes the call.

Same for anything clinical. The sheet says who to ask, not what to do: the practice, the pharmacy, the agency, with their numbers. Nobody should be improvising from a page you wrote.

Your own paperwork, kept separately

The other half of this is about you, and it is short.

A second page with: your employer's name and a contact number. Your own emergency contacts. Your children's school, the pickup list and who is authorized to collect them. Your own doctor and pharmacy. Where your own documents are kept, and who holds a key to that. Your pets and their routine. Anything with a hard deadline in your own life in the next two weeks.

Keep it separate from your parent's document, because the two get used by different people for different reasons. Put it in a sealed envelope with a name on it and tell one person where it is.

Anything to do with your own legal or financial documents is a conversation with an attorney, not a page to write. Book that separately; it is usually shorter and cheaper than people expect.

One line at the bottom of the page does a surprising amount of work: what you would want somebody to tell your parent, and who you would want to tell them. Write it now, while it is an administrative question rather than an urgent one.

The dry run, once a year

A plan that has never been used is a hypothesis. Test it once a year, over one ordinary weekend.

Hand the document to your backup on a Friday and go away, properly away, until Sunday evening. Ask them to write down every question they had to look up, every thing they could not find, and every moment they nearly called you. Then add all of it to the document.

The first dry run always produces between five and fifteen additions, and they are usually mundane: which entrance the pharmacy uses, that the second lock sticks, that the aide comes at eight and not nine.

After that, review it twice a year on the same dates as the other paperwork reviews, and always after four events: a house move, a change of care arrangement, a change of phone number, or a change in who the backup is.

Date it and initial it every time. And when you update it, send the new version to both backups rather than assuming they will ask. A stale document in somebody's kitchen drawer is the most reassuring kind of useless.

Questions