You probably don’t need a list of passwords for most of these. It certainly helps to have a list of institutions you have accounts with, but you don’t necessarily even have to list actual account numbers.
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.
> The simple truth is that people die everyday and dealing with this stuff is normal for most any institution of note.
Correct. The problem is, the tech SaaS companies like Google, which increasingly become critical to people's day-to-day life, are not "institutions of note", and in fact they do their damned best to avoid and weasel out of "dealing with this stuff", or account recovery support in general (or any support "that doesn't scale").
Maybe in a decade or two, when enough bereaved families (and people just breaking their phones at a bad moment) will end up cut off from important assets because of a broken/nonexistent account recovery process, that the public pressure will mount and tech companies will be forced by law to actually provide support.
Sure, but instead of my spouse having to send a birth certificate to someone like google, and open a ticket and the whole thing, she can just dump my password in there and see if there's anything she wants.
It's easy to go through that process once, but I think you're underestimating the amount of busy work in a stressful time.
Does my wife need to deal with the fucking utility company to make sure water and garbage aren't stopped for none payment or would she rather just look in the password safe and pay the bill and move on to something worth thinking about?
> Will Apple and Google open up with these documents? I can’t say with any specificity. But I imagine so.
Not sure about Google/Apple, but I think Microsoft will not provide access to accounts of deceased owners unless required by law (Germany and China, apparently?):
Google and Apple support legacy contacts to facilitate transferring ownership of digital accounts. Life is easier for those you leave behind if you set that up now.
The benefit of a legacy contact is more veracity when you present a death certificate. Not the same when you’re simply using recovery emails imho. It’s the digital equivalent of a beneficiary designation.
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.