The emergency folder: what belongs in it, and who has to be able to reach it

What is an emergency folder?

An emergency folder collects the documents somebody else needs if you are in hospital or you have died. Powers of attorney and directives, insurance policies, current contracts, contacts, a list of your accounts. No rule anywhere requires one, which is exactly why almost nobody has one.

What separates it from the rest of your paperwork is access. Your archive exists so that you can find something again. The emergency folder exists so that somebody else can, under time pressure and without being able to ask you.

Power of attorney, guardianship directive, living will

These three get confused constantly, although they answer quite different questions. A Vorsorgevollmacht says who may act for you, and works immediately with no court involved. A Betreuungsverfügung says whom the court should appoint if a guardianship becomes necessary after all; the court has to follow that wish as long as the person is suitable (§ 1816 BGB). A Patientenverfügung, the living will, says which treatment you do and do not want.

Only the living will strictly requires written form (§ 1827 BGB). It also has to be specific: it should name the treatment in question and the situation in which the instruction applies. General sentences about dying with dignity or forgoing life-prolonging measures are treated by the courts as too vague, and they leave doctors no better off.

A Vorsorgevollmacht is generally valid without any particular form, as soon as it is signed. It needs notarisation if it is to be used for property transactions, because the land registry requires publicly certified documents (§ 29 GBO). The Federal Ministry of Justice publishes brochures and fillable forms on these topics.

What spouses have been allowed to do automatically since 2023

Something changed here that many older guides still get wrong. Since 1 January 2023, spouses may represent each other in health matters without any power of attorney (§ 1358 BGB): consenting to or refusing treatment, concluding treatment and hospital contracts, asserting claims arising from the illness.

The limits are tight. The right lasts six months, counted from the day a doctor certifies the incapacity in writing. It falls away if the spouses live apart, if somebody has already been authorised or appointed as guardian, or if the person concerned has objected. And it covers health matters only.

So it does not reach the bank account, the contracts or the flat. Anyone assuming that being married covers it is right about medicine and wrong about everything else.

What belongs in the folder

Keep the folder thin. Everything you put in it is something a person has to read and understand in an emergency.

• The power of attorney, guardianship directive and living will, as originals
• A contact list: relatives, GP, employer, tax adviser, notary
• Insurance policies with their numbers, above all health, pension, life and accident cover
• Current contracts: tenancy, energy, phone, subscriptions
• An overview of accounts and a list of online accounts; passwords belong in a password manager
• Funeral wishes if you have any, and a note saying where the will is kept

How doctors and courts find out

A document nobody knows about works like no document at all. The Federal Chamber of Notaries runs the Zentrales Vorsorgeregister for exactly this: you record that your power of attorney, guardianship directive or living will exists and where it is kept. The register may be queried by guardianship courts, by doctors and by the notarial chambers, which is precisely the set of people who have to decide in an emergency. What is registered is the pointer, not the content.

A card in your wallet next to your ID helps alongside it, saying that these documents exist and who should be notified. In an ambulance, that is the first place anyone looks.

For organ donation, Germany has had its own state donor register since 18 March 2024, operated by the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices. Registering is voluntary, free and changeable at any time. The paper donor card remains valid alongside it; what counts is whichever declaration is the most recent.

Why bank authority has to be separate

In practice the bank account is where this fails most often. Banks frequently decline to accept a general power of attorney as it stands and insist on their own form. Settle that with your bank in advance, not in the emergency.

Account authority that expressly survives death spares your survivors the wait for a certificate of inheritance: the authorised person can act immediately with a death certificate and their own ID, paying the rent and the funeral. It changes nothing about who inherits, it only bridges the weeks in between, and the authorised person remains accountable to the heirs.

For parents: naming a guardian

Anyone with minor children can determine who should become their guardian, and also who should not (§ 1782 BGB). That determination is made in a testamentary disposition, which means in a will. If the two parents have named different people, the designation of the last one to die applies.

Because the strict form rules of a will apply, this is the one point in this guide where legal or notarial help genuinely pays for itself. A page typed on a computer and signed may not suffice, and the mistake only surfaces when nobody is left to correct it.

Where the folder lives and who knows about it

The best folder is no use in a safe deposit box that only you can open in an emergency. At home in a fixed place is better, and at least one trusted person should know exactly where.

Put a digital copy in your archive as well, so the details are reachable from anywhere when somebody needs a policy number over the phone. The originals of the powers and directives still stay on paper: what gets produced at the hospital and the bank is the signed sheet.

One more thing that slips easily: an emergency folder goes out of date. Contracts end, accounts appear, people move. Going through it once a year is enough, ideally alongside your tax return when everything is in front of you anyway.

The digital part

Online accounts pass to the heirs like any other contract; Germany's Federal Court of Justice decided that in 2018 (judgment of 12 July 2018, III ZR 183/17). That right helps nobody who does not know which accounts exist in the first place.

A plain list of the providers is enough: bank, insurer, email, mobile, subscriptions, cloud storage. The passwords themselves do not belong in the folder but in a password manager whose master access your trusted person knows, or can obtain in an emergency.

Frequently asked questions