Our story
Why we created The Finder’s Book
A mother. A son. One question we couldn’t ignore.
The question
“If something happened to me, would you know everything you needed to know?”
We’re Joanne Godfrey and Michael David Warren Jr., the mother-and-son team behind The Finder’s Book. Our professional lives have taken very different paths, but both taught us how much clarity matters when people are depending on you.
The book didn’t begin with either of our careers, though. It began with that question, asked one ordinary day.
Michael thought about it. And froze.
Of course he knew his mother. Her stories, her routines, her personality, the things she loved, the people who mattered to her. But that wasn’t what she was asking.
Would he know where her important documents were? What insurance policies existed? Who should be contacted first? What financial, medical, household, or personal responsibilities would suddenly need attention? Where her will was kept? Which professionals or institutions held information he might need? What digital accounts existed, or how she intended them to be handled?
The answer was uncomfortable: not completely.
He knew the person he loved. He did not necessarily know the information he might someday need in order to help manage the life she left behind.
That stayed with both of us. Because if a son who speaks to his mother, knows her well, and loves her deeply could still be missing critical information — how many other families would discover the same thing only after an emergency?
The person left searching
We started thinking about whoever has to step in.
A daughter at the kitchen table surrounded by papers. A spouse trying to remember which company holds a policy. A sibling calling relatives asking, “do you know where they kept this?” A close friend trying to help during a hospitalization. A caregiver searching through emails. A chosen family member who knows what their loved one wanted but has no idea where the documentation lives.
All of it happening while someone is already frightened, grieving, or under pressure to make decisions.
That was the problem we wanted to solve. Not death. Not grief. Not every legal or financial decision a family may face. The search — the unnecessary confusion that happens when everything one person knows about their own life disappears behind them.
So we built the guide we wished our own family already had, and approached it as a family emergency planning problem rather than a legal one.
The doctrine
A pointer, not a vault.
This is the single decision that shapes everything else in the book, and it is why the finished book is far less dangerous to keep at home than a list of credentials would be.
The Finder’s Book does not ask you to record passwords, PINs, recovery codes, full account numbers, full Social Security numbers, safe combinations, or the location of hidden cash. That information was not forgotten. It was deliberately left out.
Instead it uses safer identifying information where appropriate — the last four digits of an account, for example — and directs your Finder toward the secure system, professional, institution, or original document where protected information actually belongs. For digital accounts the principle is the same: identify what exists and where official access or legacy arrangements can be found, never the password itself.
Leaving credentials out sharply limits what a stranger could do with the book, but it does not reduce the risk to nothing: institution names, professional contacts, and where originals are kept are all still worth protecting. So the finished book belongs somewhere secure that your Finder can still reach — that combination is what a safer information handoff actually means.
It is also why the book works on paper. You do not need our servers, our app, or our company to exist in ten years for your family to open a binder and read what you wrote.
Your Finder
Someone should not have to reconstruct your life before they can help.
We call the person you trust your Finder. Your Finder might be your spouse, an adult child, a sibling, your closest friend, a caregiver, an executor, or your chosen family.
Whoever they are, they need a starting point. That became the foundation of everything we built, and it is why the book front-loads the four decisions that carry the most weight rather than asking eighty questions first. You can read the full method in how The Finder’s Book works.
Alongside, not instead of
It complements your legal and medical planning.
A will provides instructions concerning your estate. A trust may govern property placed within it. A power of attorney may authorize someone to act on your behalf. An advance directive can communicate healthcare wishes. Those original documents, and the professionals responsible for them, serve important legal and medical purposes.
The Finder’s Book serves a different one. It helps the right person know those documents exist, where they can be located, who may have them, and where to begin.
Because having a beautifully prepared estate plan does not help your family if no one knows where it is. Having insurance does not help someone quickly if they do not know the policy exists. Having an attorney, physician, accountant, or trusted adviser does not help anyone if no one knows who they are. Our guide to the important documents families search for walks through each category in turn.
Who made it
The two people behind The Family Clarity Co.
Joanne Godfrey
Joanne has spent more than 15 years working in social services, helping individuals and families navigate assessments, care coordination, planning, therapeutic support, and complicated life transitions. With a background in psychology and graduate training in mental health counseling, much of her career has centered on helping people make sense of situations that can feel overwhelming. She shaped the questions the book asks and the order it asks them in — the difference between a form that collects data and a document a frightened person can actually follow.
Michael David
Michael is an editorial and celebrity hairstylist, beauty educator, entrepreneur, and creative professional whose career has taken him across fashion, entertainment, editorial, and global productions — including serving as Rihanna’s primary hairstylist. That work has required trust, discretion, preparation, and the ability to manage countless details where there is very little room for error. He is responsible for the book’s structure, typography, and layout system: something that reads calmly under stress, works equally well typed or handwritten, and never makes the person filling it in feel judged for what they have not done yet.
The Family Clarity System™ is a trademark of Joanne Godfrey and Michael David Warren Jr.
What this is not
An organizer should help your family find the right next step, not pretend to replace a professional.
The Finder’s Book is a structured template for personal record-keeping. It is not a will, a trust, a contract, a power of attorney, or an advance directive, and it confers no authority over any account, property, or medical decision. The legal documents your family will need are the originals, executed and stored according to the requirements of your jurisdiction.
We say this plainly on the product page, in the book itself, and here, because a document that overstates its own authority is worse than no document at all.
Start
Leave clarity, not questions.
You cannot organize away grief, and you cannot prepare someone for every emergency. But while you are here, you can leave a clearer path behind.