- Will
- Living trust
- Power of attorney
- Life insurance policy
- Birth certificate
- Marriage license
- Bank and credit card accounts
- Loan documents
- Automobile titles
- Property deeds
- Copies of keys to automobiles, safe deposit boxes, etc.
- Account and device passwords1. A list of all our financial accounts (checking, savings, retirement, etc) and bills. My spouse already has access to all these, but I handle all the day-to-day finances so it would be easy to forget a particular account or bill exists.
2. Phone numbers, URLs, and policy numbers for my life insurance policies.
3. Information about our internet and our off-site backups. Along with complicated networking equipment, I am self-hosting some software like DNS that could cause the home wifi to stop working if it's not maintained properly. I have instructions on how to unplug it all and set up an off-the-shelf router.
4. Instructions on how to get "In Case of Emergency" access to my password manager. I don't think this is necessary but might make a few things easier.
5. Personal advice on getting help and not withdrawing from family during the grieving process
Outside of this, I also have Google Inactivity Manager set up to automatically notify close friends if both me and my spouse pass away. While I'm guessing the police would notify our family somehow, my parents don't have contact information on my closest friends.
Trusts that don't own any properties are useless. Just transfer real estate and land to trusts asap. Even though it is true that trusts save one from the probate headache, lawyers want 10 percent for dissolving and/or administering trusts. One doesn't need lawyers to dissolve/administer trusts; if you are a trustee, better familiar yourself with dissolution of trusts.
The simple truth is that people die everyday and dealing with this stuff is normal for most any institution of note.
All you really need is a Will and an executor or administrator. A death certificate and set of Letters of Administration will open many doors typically locked.
Combine with a name, DOB, and SSN, there are departments that deal with all this.
Will Apple and Google open up with these documents? I can’t say with any specificity. But I imagine so. But even so, this is why you want a list institutions. In the old days, wait a month or a quarter and you’d likely as not get paper statements or bills from open accounts. With a lot of paperless things today, without access to email, it makes discovery more difficult.
So, a list of accounts and your email password in an envelope may be all you need. The estate process will likely deal with everything else.
- People to notify of your death. You may have online friends who won't have any way to know why you've disappeared.
And for tech enthusiasts:
- If you host something like a blog or side project that you think people would still find useful after your death, list someone who can keep it online, and any relevant hosting information.
- If you maintain popular open source software, make sure you aren't the only one who can upload to npm etc., or update the official website.
“O treachery! Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly! Thou may’st revenge – O slave!”
- and importantly be sure to leave a list of who your enemies are, to give the detectives a starting point.
I would take all of the the things you listed (and what others have listed) and put them in a safe or fire-resistant box then give a sealed envelope to whoever is going to be the executor of your estate with information about how to find and access the box.
The most useful things you can do are:
- Make an expression of wishes to tell your pension/life insurance provider what to do with your money. This might be a UK thing, but here your pension does not form part of your estate and therefore isn't governed by your will. So if you die without filling out this BS little form, the trustees of the pension can in theory divide up your pension in a way you don't like. Even if you have filled out an expression of wishes they can do this but it's more susceptible to legal challenge if they do.
- If you are married or in a similar long-term partnership with someone, put as much of your finances as possible into joint accounts and in particular have your regular bill payments etc work through a joint account. Your bank will freeze any individual accounts until the probate is granted and your family can be left in a difficult position of trying to figure out what all the bills are that are going to fail to pay because your account has been frozen and they have no access. Them having your online passwords won't help because the online access will be shut off.
- Put an emergency fund into a savings account that your spouse/child whatever can access. Ideally enough for your dependents to live on for a couple of months plus handle a couple of chunky bills. It can be one of those savings accounts that only allows one access per year or something but they need to be able to get their hands on this cash quick. We're just setting this up for our child after seeing how it played out for my Dad. Say you have one child and you and your spouse suddenly die in a car cash or something. Believe it or not your accounts (including all joint accounts) will be instantly frozen and there will be a period before matters get resolved when your child will have no access to money at all. There are ways around this predicament but you wouldn't want to put your families through that if they're already dealing with the fact of your death as well.
It may depend on where you live, but as soon as you're registred as dead, most things will get handled automatically, more or less. Copies of keys and a list of accounts and passwords might be a good idea. It took two years for people to stop wishing a deceased friend of mine happy birthday on Facebook every year.
The issue I see is: Here would you put such a file? In a safe... where would you put the combination? You need somewhere that will be release to next of kin, or some trusted part at after death... So a safety deposit box is a good option, so no need to put the keys to that in there.
One really important thing: If you're married, ensure that your spouse have an account in their name, and their name only. The bank will freeze all shared accounts until everything has been sorted, leaving your spouse without access to debit cards and funds in general.
An empty thumb drive.
- 2 factor seed phrases. Combined with a password manager and a list of services you use could be quite convenient
- Maybe also the answers to silly questions like ‘first pets name’
- list of professionals you use, like accountant, financial advisor, lawyer, psychologist
- list of people you’ve lost touch with but hold in high regard, so they don’t have to think too much about who to contact in case they want to come up the funeral
- your wishes as a patient (how do you want to die) ... It could happen you cannot express that anymore and someone has to make a decision. This will make that easier.
- give access before death (eg to banking accounts). So much easier than dealing with shitty processes
- if possible reduce your assets to money. It is no help to have a valuable comic collection which ends up on a yard sale or for the wrong price sold or it takes endless to sell.
- clarify the situation with everyone in the family so they do not fight over it
- generally keep your documents in order and sort out old stuff. You never know which files are needed
- write your medical history
- keep your will simple.
- get your digital life in order and keep it simple (photos on a hard disk, folder structure etc)
There are plenty of good ideas already, I will add mine.
My wife will be devastated when I die and she is not the kind of "business oriented" person. So I rely on my best friend to help her, as well on my children who will then be young adults (even if it happens tomorrow). My friend has access to basically everything I own and he could make terrible things, but I could trust him with my life - I think it is rare to have someone you can completely trust (even though he lives 1200 km away).
I use Bitwarden to keep all my passwords and secure notes. Most of the passwords are in the "family" section so everyone has access no matter if I am alive or not. Since this is a self-hosted system, I need to dump the passwords from time to time and print this out, just in case. I need to do this today :)
My friend above called me one day to say "hey, I cannot get to your bank account". To what I said "WTF dude??". To what he said that he is doing a DRP (Disaster Recovery Plan) test and one of the passwords changed.... So: test your stuff.
I automated a lot of things at home, they usually work 70% of the time :) I realize that there is no way someone can maintain this after my death so I added a "how to dumb down the house" section that describes what can be removed.
I am still investigating the email part. I currently use my own domains and Google Workspace (grandfathered). I think I will be better off switching to fastmail so that what remains of my family can have a single point of contact. I also need to find a way to manage the domains.
Money: my wife is not very good with it so I did a very rough excel sheet to show her how much she can spend to comfortably live her life going on. This is more in the "recomforting" section but this will probably help.
I specifically did not put any nostalgia-inducing elements because this is not the right place for that - she need to be able to read it like a tax report.
One word about the death itself. I am a (fervent :)) atheist and never wondered too much about death but, like everyone, this was not my favorite philosophical topic :) Then I had an operation that required a total anesthesia. This is when I stopped worrying about death - the kind of "switch off" you experience then was eye opening.
A big list what bills have to be paid, to whom, by when, with estimated amounts, adrrsses, telephone numbers, bank account numbers.
Your social security number.
Information if some of your personal belongings (e.g. books, toys) are worth something to collectors.
Wifi password
Actual list of people who you want invited to the funeral. If you get a phone with 500 contacts it is hard to say.
Information what type of grave you want, what religion.
Someone technically savy needs access to phone (including being able to pay the bills in thr future) + main email account to unlock things.
Feel free to steal this startup idea. I'm afraid there might be some hurdles marketing this - and also localization can be a challenge.
My dad had three-ring binders for each member of the family with the info you listed plus some which others did, including obit info. He also created a list of things to do in order. The list and binder were both very helpful. I imagine if I hadn't been over it with him multiple times over the years that it would have been a lifesaver.
Don't just leave this to a folder full of documents on a computer for them to try and interpret post mortem. Make sure everyone understands what the real situation is and what needs to be taken care of.
> organ donor?
> Nope[1], I have ethical concerns related to duty of care and doctors pressuring for organs. It's my preference to remove the need for family members to have these conversations by opting out.
> [1] If my children or their children need organs, please harvest away.
I have a ‘fire resistant’ case for…fire, but I also put relevant death documents there. So, my wife can just grab that case.
And trust me: Get a legal will, no matter what state laws you live under. Cheap, quick, easy.
Other than that, it depends a lot on your situation—married, kids, amount of possessions, special requests, etc.
My parents and brother have an envelope containing instructions on:Bwhere my private "pass" repo is hosted, my yubikey pin, the name of the entry containing my bip39 key, and a list of coins to activate in ledger that contain balances.
Luckily my ex-teacher, non-techy brother is more into crypto than me and will know what to do.
They have a useful concept of Deputies (https://help.everplans.com/hc/en-us/sections/203670817-All-T...) who can be individually permissioned to see particular data in the vault, and which data will be released after some logic, like a timeout period after another designated person informs the site of user death.
So some see assets of sentimental value, some see the legal and financial stuff involving trusts, life insurance policies etc.
There are a bunch of digital vaults that were started during the covid lockdowns (vaguely disturbing, imagining founders sitting around trying to think "How can I make money off of this planetary disaster" and then having an Aha moment). This was acquired by a life insurer that is over a century old and marketing this service to its users, so holding out some hope (though by no means a guarantee) that they will still be around in a few decades.
I also have qr codes with my ssh keys.
- 401(k)s, IRAs, etc.
- 529s
- SSNs
The difference is that I don't know how you can access your money in a situation like this. Can a file help here?
- All contracts and how to reach the counterparty (esp. insurance, subscriptions, phone, water, power)
- Instructions on things that you take care of regularly so your partner isn’t aware of the details
But any property in joint names AUTOMATICALLY becomes the property of the joint owner and IS NOT subject to any restrictions
What????
In most jurisdictions, the law says the executor of your will can operate on the will, its contents etc, but there are strict legal requirements and it is NOT automatic. A court usually has to OK it.
In Australia it is a probate court. It takes several weeks to make sure the will in question is the real and most recent.
As a general case, the courts allow the estate to pay for things like funerals etc.
If there is no will then someone has to apply to the courts for administration.
Your "next of kin" is a Hollywood dramatization and in Australia has absolutely no actual power to do anything.
Usually the "next of kin" will actually do the organizing to inform the executor (if the executor doesn't know)
So the important things to put in your "In case of Death file" Location of will Name of Executor Burial insurance details (if you have any)
Location of a secondary file for the executor with email account and website account passwords, Bank Account details, Insurance policy details Location of a secondary file for the executor with email account and website account passwords, in short everything the executor needs.
I also have a document containing the "order of my life"
This is how I have organized my life. Whose name the cars/boat/golf buggy is in, what insurance companies, Utility companies for power water and services, clubs I am members of, things like roadside assistance etc. How I buy and sell my equities and shares, who I am paying hush money to and who is blackmailing me from porn hub. Basically all the minor things I do in everyday life.
If you are uncomfortable with this topic, if nothing else investigate an "Enduring Power of Attorney" (it may be called something else in your jurisdiction).
This expires with your death but it allows the holder to make medical and other decisions should you become unable to make decisions for yourself (dementia, coma, stroke accidents that leave you in a vegetative stake) (In Australia a spouse has that right automatically but if your spouse is unable to make that decision (died in the same accident, has dementia etc) then you NEED an Enduring Power of Attorney). Your children do not have the right and your executor in the future can take legal action against them)
This is way more important than a "in case of death file"