Downsizing a Parent's Home: Paperwork to Keep Before the Move

When you're downsizing a parent's home, keep anything that proves who they are, what they own, what they're owed or what they've signed: deeds and titles, the will and powers of attorney, insurance policies, recent tax returns, pension and account statements, ID and benefit cards, military discharge papers, and the records from buying and improving the house. The originals ride in your car, not the moving truck. Paid bills and junk mail can be shredded, and anything you aren't sure about goes in a "read later" box.

The one rule for clearing out paper

No paper leaves the house unread. Not the folders, not the shoeboxes, and especially not the envelope of "old stuff" in the hall closet.

That sounds slow, and it is, a little. But the papers that matter most are rarely filed where you'd look. A paid-up life insurance policy from 1974 looks like junk mail. A savings bond can be folded inside a birthday card. So the job is triage, not filing: four boxes, and only one goes to the shredder.

Where papers hide in a parent's house

Many parents have a "papers drawer," and it's tempting to stop there. Also check:

• Inside books, especially the family Bible, cookbooks and photo albums.
• Coat pockets, purses and handbags in the back of the closet.
• The freezer. It sounds odd, but it takes a minute to check.
• Under drawer liners and taped to the bottom or back of drawers.
• Tackle boxes, tool chests, sewing baskets and the glove box of the car.
• The desk of a spouse who has died, which often hasn't been fully opened since.

Shake out every book before it goes to donation.

The keep list, document by document

Here's what to keep and what to do if you can't find it. For the wider list of legal and medical papers, see our guide to important documents for aging parents.

Property: deeds, titles and the house file

• The deed to the house. If the original is missing, the county office that records deeds (often called the recorder or register of deeds) can usually provide a copy, and a title company handling a sale can usually pull it too.
• Vehicle titles, including for the car your parent no longer drives. The FTC suggests keeping auto titles and home deeds stored safely for as long as you own the property.
• The closing statement from when they bought the house. Under IRS rules, some of the settlement fees and closing costs on it count toward the home's basis. More on that below.
• Mortgage, home equity and payoff letters, plus property tax bills and any HOA documents, which often come up in a sale.

Legal: will, powers of attorney and health care documents

Find the original will, the financial power of attorney, the health care proxy or advance directive, and any POLST or out-of-hospital DNR. Originals go in the locked box; a new community gets copies. If your parent's directive was signed in another state, our guide to advance directive forms by state covers whether it still works in the new one.

Insurance policies

Keep every life insurance policy and annuity contract you find, including ones that look ancient. Here's why.

The NAIC Life Insurance Policy Locator, a free search tool from the national association of state insurance regulators, only works after a death. The NAIC says plainly that the tool will not locate policies or annuities for people who are alive. So right now, while your parent can answer questions, the policy itself and your parent's memory are the best leads you have. Massachusetts regulators note that even a paid-up policy may still send annual notices, so look for those in the mail pile too. Write down the company and policy number of anything you find.

Also keep: long-term care insurance policies (the policy spells out how to file a claim), the Medicare supplement or Advantage and Part D cards, and the homeowners policy until the house is sold and any claim is closed.

Money: pensions, annuities, bank and brokerage accounts

You don't need ten years of bank statements to prove an account exists. Keep the most recent statement for each checking, savings, CD, brokerage, IRA, annuity and pension account, so you have the institution, the account number and a phone number.

If a former private-sector employer's pension plan ended and lost track of your parent, the benefit may have been sent to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which keeps a searchable database of unclaimed retirement benefits by last name and the last four digits of a Social Security number. A decades-old letter from that employer can help show where your parent worked and when.

Paper savings bonds are easy to toss by mistake. Keep every one. TreasuryDirect's old bond search tool, Treasury Hunt, stopped working on September 30, 2025, so finding the actual bond matters more than it used to. If an EE or I bond was lost or destroyed, Treasury can replace it as an electronic bond or cash it through FS Form 1048. Paper stock certificates go in the same keep pile.

ID, benefits and vital records

• Social Security card. Keep it in the locked box, not the wallet. Social Security notes that in most cases a physical card isn't necessary if you know the number, and a replacement is free.
• Medicare card. New doctors will ask for it. If it's lost, you can print an official copy from their Medicare account or call 1-800-MEDICARE for a new one by mail.
• Military discharge papers (DD-214). This is the standard record of service. VA says it will request the DD214 itself when someone applies for benefits, but a copy on hand still answers a lot of questions. Most veterans and next of kin can get free copies from the National Archives. Our guide to VA benefits paperwork for a veteran parent goes further.
• Birth, marriage and divorce certificates, citizenship papers and passports. The FTC lists these among the documents to lock securely, along with death certificates of family members. If your parent is widowed, keep any certified copies of the spouse's death certificate, since some offices won't accept a photocopy.

If a vital record is missing, the CDC's Where to Write for Vital Records page links to the office in the state where the birth, marriage, divorce or death happened. The federal government doesn't issue these itself.

Tax records: how long to keep them

The IRS keep window depends on what the record supports. Here's how its guidance on how long to keep records works out for a typical retired parent.

The FTC takes a more cautious line and suggests it's best to keep tax returns themselves forever. The IRS also reminds people to check whether an insurer or creditor needs a record longer before discarding it.

Missing a year? The IRS offers transcripts of past returns online or by mail.

Home sale records: the papers worth real money

If the house is being sold, records of what your parent paid for it and put into it can lower the tax owed. The IRS explains the rules in Publication 523, Selling Your Home.

The basics: an owner who qualifies can exclude a large part of the gain from income, up to the limit in Pub 523, and the limit is higher for a married couple filing jointly. The gain itself is roughly the sale amount minus the home's adjusted basis, which starts with the purchase price and some closing costs and goes up with improvements.

Improvements are things that add value, extend the home's life or adapt it to new uses. Pub 523's examples include a new roof, a furnace, central air, an added bathroom, a deck and storm windows. Painting and fixing leaks are repairs, which don't count. So look for:

• The old purchase contract and closing statement.
• Contractor invoices, canceled checks and permits for big projects.
• Any notes on what was done and when. Even a list on the back of an envelope helps a tax preparer.

Three details that often matter for older parents:

1. A move to a nursing home may not cost the exclusion. Normally the owner must have lived in the home 2 of the last 5 years. But if your parent can't care for themselves and lived there at least 12 months of those 5 years, Pub 523 counts time in a licensed care facility toward that requirement.
2. A widowed parent may get the larger exclusion. Pub 523 says a surviving spouse may be able to use the married-couple amount if the home is sold within 2 years of the spouse's death and other conditions are met.
3. An older home sale can change the math. Pub 523's worksheet subtracts any gain postponed from the sale of a previous home before May 7, 1997. That figure would show up on the tax return for the year the earlier house was sold, one more reason not to shred old returns.

Keep the home's records until 3 years after the tax return for the year of the sale is due, which is the window Pub 523 gives. This is general information; your parent's tax preparer should run their actual numbers.

Keys, the safe deposit box and passwords

Keep every unidentified key in a labeled bag until the move is finished. A small flat key with a number stamped on it is often a safe deposit box key. If you find one, figure out which bank it belongs to while your parent can still go in and sign. Our guide on where to keep important documents explains how box access works, and why it gets harder later.

Passwords are the other loose key. Look for a password notebook or sticky notes inside the desk, and write down where they're kept rather than copying the passwords themselves. Our guide to digital estate planning for parents covers phones, email and photos.

Old computers, phones and tablets are paper in disguise. The FTC points out that a computer may hold financial information like account numbers or tax returns, and its advice is to back up what you want to keep, then erase the drive before the machine is donated or recycled.

What senior living will ask for

If your parent is moving to independent living, assisted living or a nursing home, the community's admission packet will likely ask for a slice of the same pile. Common requests include photo ID, Medicare and supplement cards, copies of the advance directive and powers of attorney, a medication list, and proof of income.

For proof of income, Social Security offers a benefit verification letter, downloadable from your parent's online account or by phone, and pension statements can cover the rest. Our assisted living paperwork checklist and nursing home admission checklist list the forms in detail; the first also covers a house that sits empty before it sells.

This changes what you shred. If your parent might need Medicaid for long-term care in the next few years, keep the bank statements. Most states review transfers from the past 60 months (California uses a shorter window), and what each state asks for varies. Oklahoma, for example, asks for the last 60 months of statements on all accounts, including closed ones, plus documentation of anything sold or given away. A house sale may fall inside that window, so keep the closing papers and a record of where the money went. Our guide to the Medicaid look-back period explains how the review works.

What you can shred, and how

The FTC's guidance:

• Shred right away: paid credit card and utility bills, and sales receipts that aren't tied to warranties, taxes or insurance.
• Shred after a year: bank statements, pay stubs and medical bills, unless there's an unresolved insurance dispute. (For a parent who may need Medicaid, hold the bank statements, as above.)
• Wait seven years: tax-related receipts and canceled checks.

Expired cards, old checkbooks and anything showing a Social Security or Medicare number go to the shredder, never the recycling bin. As the FTC notes, identity thieves can't find documents you have destroyed. For decades of paper, a community shred day or a shredding service beats a home machine.

Frequently asked questions

What papers should you keep when cleaning out a parent's house?

Anything that proves identity, ownership, money owed or legal authority: deeds and titles, the will, powers of attorney and advance directive, insurance policies, tax returns, the latest statement for each account, pension records, savings bonds, ID and benefit cards, the DD-214, vital records, and the records of buying and improving the house.

How many years of tax returns should my parent keep?

The IRS generally ties the keep window to 3 years after filing, longer in some cases and for property records. The FTC suggests keeping the returns themselves forever.

Do I need to keep my parent's old bank statements?

Usually only the most recent one for each account. The exception is long-term care: if your parent might apply for Medicaid, some states, such as Oklahoma, ask for 60 months of statements on every account, so keep five years' worth and check your state's rules.

The list that outlasts the boxes

In a year nobody will remember which closet the pension letters went into. What lasts is a written list of each account, policy and legal document, and where the original is now.

You can make that list yourself from this article and a legal pad. Or Emergency Binder Now can build it with you from about 25 minutes of guided questions, as a printable binder with a page showing whether each legal document exists and where it's kept, the insurance and money details, a one-page emergency sheet, and a list of what's still missing. Take a look at a sample binder to see whether it fits.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Tax rules, Medicaid rules and records offices vary by state and by your parent's situation; check with a tax professional or elder law attorney before relying on any of it.