Deceased persons documents

[poppysdad]

My Falang wife died around 3 years ago and all her personal belongings were disposed of a long time ago. However having a rummage through a file cabinet the other day I came across all her past documentation from passports to driving licence etc. My question is what if anything can I safely dispose of. I assume I should keep her death certificates but birth, marriage and divorce documents can I safely dispose of, likewise uk passports driving licence and similar. I still have all her medical documents along with the fully paid bill. The main reason I ask is that eventually I will meet a similar fate and I want to make life as simple as possible for my Thai lady and not leave her with a mountain of useless paperwork to wade through. 

[Crossy]

I would assume that the Death Certificate trumps everything else.

 

I wouldn't hesitate to dispose of everything except that.

 

Maybe take advice in the British Consular forum (let me know if you want the thread moving).

 

[jackdd]

I assume that you are a bit older and your parents most likely died already: Did you ever need any document besides the death certificate? Probably not.

I know that in Germany I was never asked for anything else, so I think you can throw everything else away.

If you have children you could give them something like the passport, maybe it survives a few generations and future descendants might find it interesting to see a passport from 100 years ago.

[NancyL]

Did you have children with your deceased wife?  They might be interested in some of the documents like her birth and marriage certificates.  And certainly her passports, especially if they were with her on the journeys.

[JimHuaHin]

The passport remains the property of the issuing governemnt, so it should be returned to their embassy in Bangkok - post it in with a copy of the death certificate shoud be ok.

[DFPhuket]

Before disposing of the documents, I'd scan or take a photo of them and save them on the cloud or a thumb drive or email them to yourself just to have a backup copy. I use Google drive for saving things like that. 

[jomtienisgood]

26 minutes ago, JimHuaHin said:

The passport remains the property of the issuing governemnt, so it should be returned to their embassy in Bangkok - post it in with a copy of the death certificate shoud be ok.

You are correct but do you think any Embassy cares about this?? 

[poppysdad]

Thanks for all the helpful replies. It’s actually very pleasant to not get any stupid ones. As for the British Embassy they told me at the time of my wife’s death to simply cut off the corner of the passport and so making it obsolete. Also not have any kids to pass anything onto so my shredder is going to become rather warm in the next few days. 

[Muhendis]

2 hours ago, jomtienisgood said:

You are correct but do you think any Embassy cares about this?? 

No the embassy does not care except, I think, to pass on the information to the relevant government department (DWP and/or IR). However since the OPs wife has been deceased for the past three years, I would imagine all is done and dusted so keeping the documents is for memories only.