Continuity mapping

The problem

When the person who understood the whole structure is suddenly unavailable, the family discovers what was never written down: passwords, bank relationships, the reasons behind the structure, which adviser holds which document, guarantees nobody else knew existed. None of this is exotic; it is simply unrecorded.

The difficulty that follows is rarely that something has been lost. It is that nobody can establish quickly enough what exists, who holds it, and who is permitted to act. Advisers work from partial information, decisions wait, and the family spends its first weeks reconstructing a picture that one person already had.

What is mapped

• People and roles: who does what now, and who would need to step in.
• Companies, trusts and other entities, and how they relate to one another.
• Assets and where they are held.
• Liabilities and guarantees, including those given personally.
• Advisers, and what each one holds.
• Bank and key supplier relationships, with the named contacts behind them.
• Critical documents and their locations, recorded rather than stored.
• Accounts, devices and access, handled so that the map itself never becomes a target.
• Who must be told, in what order.

The first 72 hours

Alongside the map there is a short written procedure for the family and its advisers, covering the first hours and days: who to call and in what order, what has to be secured straight away, and what can safely wait. It is written to be followed by someone who is not technical and who is not at their best.

I go through it with the family, and where appropriate with the advisers named in it, so that it works in practice rather than only on paper. A procedure that has been rehearsed is a different thing from one that has only been written: those who would have to use it have been through it once, calmly, before anyone needed it.

What this is not

This is not legal drafting. It is not a will, not a letter of wishes, not a trust deed, and it is not tax or investment advice. Solicitors draft the documents and the family's advisers make the determinations that belong to them.

This work sits alongside that: it records where those documents are, who can reach them, and what has to happen in the first hours and days. Custody and findability, not drafting.

Keeping it current

A record that is not maintained quietly stops being accurate, and it tends to be relied on at exactly the moment nobody can check it. The map is reviewed at least annually, and after any material change: a company bought or sold, an adviser changed, a new bank relationship, a move between jurisdictions.

Where the family wants it kept current continuously rather than reviewed periodically, that usually sits under a retained private digital office. Continuity mapping also often begins from the findings of a family cyber review, which tends to surface the access and custody questions first.

Handling and discretion

This is sensitive work and it is handled accordingly. Handling, storage and access arrangements are agreed in writing before any material is shared, and access is restricted to named people on both sides.

Where something does not need to be held, it is recorded by location and custodian rather than copied. Nothing about a family, its structure or its affairs is published, quoted or used as an example anywhere.