Ask HN: What do you put in a “in case of death” file?
I recall seeing a guide on what to put in a text file so that surviving family have an easier time dealing with all of your loose ends, e.g., digital accounts, safe deposit boxes, utilities, etc. Do any of you have thoughts on what to put in a file like this? Here is a rough list of things:
- 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 passwords
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- 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
- 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
- 401(k)s, IRAs, etc.
- 529s
- SSNs
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.
Don’t do it. Pay for an attorney to hold it on your behalf if you want a third party to hold on to it.
On top of this, safe deposit boxes are not very safe in general. Banks frequently fubar operations around them and lose, destroy, give access to the wrong people, etc.
I also have qr codes with my ssh keys.
Also, don't put your will among these things; your will will be required beforehand, so you'll want to file it directly with your attorney, family, or a close friend.
What does this mean? Sorry, I don't speak French..
More loosely translated: I don't care what comes after me
I'm sure GP's next of kin will be very pleased with them... but yeah it's the mode most people operate in. Short term gains, long term scorched earth
(My mom doesn't mean that seriously, more of a saying she uses in specific cases like about what happens to the house. Basically saying she doesn't care about a particular physical property or so.)
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"
One thing I found, sadly, was that people I love and trust including family often become greedy and grasping when there is inheritance at stake. Bear that in mind when you make a list with access details to things like bank accounts.
You may not believe it but that is what will happen to your family.
I like to think it is a reaction to grief, rather than an innate selfishness.
In common law jurisdictions, what happens upon death depends on whether the property was held under a joint tenancy [1] or tenancy in common [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrent_estate#Joint_tenanc...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrent_estate#Tenancy_in_c...
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.
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.
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?):
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/accessing-outlook...
Better to share resources prior to death for those accounts, I guess?
https://support.google.com/accounts/troubleshooter/6357590?h...
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212360
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?
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.
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.
An empty thumb drive.
https://www.inputmag.com/features/tropetrainer-thomas-buchle...
1. 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.
Interesting, did not know about this. I think there’s no good solution yet on how to be notified if an acquaintance (not close friend or family member) dies. It used to be death notices in the local newspaper, but that’s out because my acquaintances live in so many different places. Does anyone have experience with Google Inactivity Manager?
After you set it up, you get an email every few months reminding you that you have it set up. I have it set up to fire a few months after my account has no activity (YouTube logins etc).
However your question made me think. My email provider is forwarding emails delivered to my Gmail via IMAP and I'm not sure if this is considered "account activity." If it is, Google Inactivity Manager may take a very long time to kick in since this forwarding is likely to continue long after I die. I can't find any documentation about this online.
I've heard a few people talk about Dead Man's Switch[1] for this purpose but I've never used it. Theoretically it might be possible to self host a solution with a cloud provider. Using a free service like Lambda your account should survive you even if your credit card is closed.
1: https://www.deadmansswitch.net/
Probably not a popular answer on HN these days, but Facebook is pretty good for this.
I accidentally let mine trigger a couple years ago. It was on a Gmail address that my family knows is me, but I don't sign in very often, and I must have let it lapse.
Six family members each received slightly personalized "if you're reading this..." emails that I'd composed, and a couple of them were granted access to the account. I realized quickly what had happened, because I set my main email address as one of the recipients, and I reset it within about an hour.
Fortunately, I don't have any skeletons in my closet that I plan to disclose on my deathbed, so these emails were a lot closer to boring checklists than poems or confessions.
Everyone got the mail, but nobody panicked (or actually even acknowledged it), and as far as I know nobody used the account access.
This was an unsettling "what if I threw a funeral and nobody came?" moment. But it also showed me that many people just don't read their email that frequently.
I still think the feature is wonderful, and a great way to conveniently handle one element of digital-estate disposition. But the message does risk getting lost in the stream of crap that is most of today's inboxes, so I'd also recommend a Plan B.
...what?
I think it's ignorant to assume that everyone on hacker news lives in a developed country and makes a lot of money. The statement was completely unnecessary, and could've been much more useful if it instead said "if you can afford one".
Interesting, one of my greatest fears is my wife dying before me
At least i'm not aware of a religion that offers you reason to care. I leave figuring that to the reader.
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.
Even for homes, one doesn't need a will, nor a trust. Just make it "community property with a right of survivorship". What if both spouses die in some accident? A fix: joint tenancy with kids. Again, this creates a host of problems: what if a kid owes a lot of money to creditors? What if a kid files for bankruptcy? So, joint tenancy with kids is NOT recommended in such scenarios.
My brother passed this year and I paid an attorney about $1000 for some very basic templated documents on a probate-less estate in CA. The key was setting everything (before passing!) to have myself or the intended recipient as a beneficiary or joint owner. I further distributed the assets per his will and used the Small Estate process for what he had left.
Items my brother placed in my name are legally a gift and I’ll be filing gift tax paperwork in his final return. Note that the Gift Tax is not a paid tax in Federal returns, but a reduction in your Estate Tax exemption. This is still a zero tax transfer since my brother’s estate was no where near that exemption.
For what I further transferred, anything over the gift tax limit will eat into the portion of my Estate Tax exemption that is set to disappear in 2026. It’s low enough that it won’t materially affect me. If it’s extended and I manage to have my own $20MM estate there will definitely be trusts and distributions before I pass.
Estate planning isn’t difficult. Find a good CFP and/or Estate Lawyer and speak with them.
https://www.courts.ca.gov/10440.htm?rdeLocaleAttr=en
(The ~$40,000 is based on the fee for a sadly typical $2.5 million SF Bay Area home, bought before the interest-rate hike.)
In India, often times, multiple kids sell the same inherited property to different parties. Then, this property ends up in legal disputes. Often times, thugs buy such disputed properties, then kicking out other buyers who don't have the political/thug backing. Why such disputes arise in the first place? Dumb buyers, who don't demand the probate.
Probating a will takes time and money: you need to hire a lawyer; these lawyers want 10 percent of the estate or even more; and it takes some time. How to avoid this nonsense? Create another legal person/entity, called trust(treat trusts like companies with assets, stock holders, etc). Have the trust, transfer the ownership of land and real estate to that legal entity, establish trustee and beneficiaries. Dissolve the trust and distribute assets to beneficiaries, without involving the court or even lawyers.
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.
https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveBot https://archive.fart.website/archivebot/viewer/domain/ghuntl... https://archive.fart.website/archivebot/viewer/job/7qlsy
> 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.
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.
When I moved a while ago there was one box (large moving box) that I didn't unpack for years because I knew it had such a reminder in. (Turned out it wasn't in there after all, but still.)
I would. And I would also like to receive such if I am the one sorting someone’s life through.
> they're trying to sort your crap out, not stumble face first into something emotional
You are freshly dead. If they cared about you they are already dealing with strong emotions. They are not going to “stumble face first into something emotional”. Everything about the experience, including every single bureucratic form is going to remind them of you, which going to remind them that you are dead, which is going to be painfull.
What do you want them to think in that setting? If there is something you would like to say to them in that moment, maybe you should think in the now if you are living your current days the best way to communicate that thing both with words and actions. But even if you do that you should maybe consider writing a letter reinforcing your message to them.
Why? Experiencing the death of a loved one is stressfull. The time leading up to it can be even more so. If you died suddenly then because of that. If you suffered and fought for long then because of that. Maybe you had some argument with your loved ones just before your death? Maybe you haven’t had a proper chance to say good bye? Even if you live your life the best there is a chance for something random and unpleasant to mar the last memories with your loved ones. If you leave them a letter that can help them with their pain, and give you a chance to articulate one last time the things you want them to know.
I understand that you are aiming to spare your relations from emotional anguish so they can better concentrate on whatever task is at hand. It is I believe comming from a place of caring. And there is something to it. Maybe separate the emotional last message from the official stuff? Put it in a separate envelope and make it clear who it is adressed and that it is a last message? And then they can decide when to read it. Maybe they want to read it first and then cry for a few days and then get stuff in order? Or maybe they need to mourn you before they are ready to read it and mourn you even more? Or maybe they will never read it, and that is fine too? But they have at least the option if they want to.
Now I assume you are a lovely person and you have lovely loving relationship with your closed ones. So don’t take this personally. But if i would get the last box from some relative and there is a bunch of car keys with no personal note… i might think they cared about their car more than me. Of course this is context dependent and the context is the relationship as it was lived.
But look, I'm not telling anyone what to do, obviously (I 'd hope), I just wanted to offer an alternative perspective to the top-level comment surprise that nobody had mentioned this yet as though it was something that obviously should absolutely be done.
And as I said in reply to other comment, maybe it wasn't clear, but I'm not saying such a note somewhere else is a bad idea necessarily, I just wouldn't lump it in with 'admin' stuff that they're trying to deal with, keeping emotions in check, personally.
- [legal, property related] Read and complete these time sensitive things first.
- [to those I loved, emotional] Read this once the dust settles.
Not a great moment.
- 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)
Also, if you are wealthy enough consider giving it to someone less wealthy in the club who will enjoy it.
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.
I’m my parents only child. My parents put my name on one of their accounts with enough money to handle their expenses and bills for a few months while everything went through probate.
The difference is that I don't know how you can access your money in a situation like this. Can a file help here?
Also, it strikes me as an odd thing to prepare for. You planning on visiting North Korea, or are involved in things that look very illegal but are secretly actually fine and it would take months to talk your way to a point where you can communicate with your loved ones?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ihrGNGesfI
I don't have a tl;dr, but it's worth an hour of your time.
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.
- 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.
https://github.com/christophercalm/if-im-gone
https://github.com/potatoqualitee/eol-dr
“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.
This advice seems to apply only to a minority of people that have enemies that might consider killing them and have the resources to do it without leaving much evidence behind. I don't think this would apply to the average person.
The average person - the median - has little cost in asking this question - but for the minority it applies to, it has a very large cost if not asked.
Imagine a helpful insurance policy. “Most” people wouldn’t benefit from it. Fine. Those that do would make up for it on intensity of bentit.
Obvious Assassin.
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.
There were bad happenings with friends previously in the family. Friends suddenly wanted really fat share after the family member died.
This friend is way worse than me financially and could easily take advantage of the trust but I simply know he won't. Knowing someone for 20 years, in good and bad times, helps to get to know their real side. This is someone I would trust my small children with (and I did), and so would he.
Honestly, your comment makes me sad.
As someone running a lot of custom automations on Home Assistant, thank you for this tip.
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.
Though, this kinda sounds like what a lawyer and will is supposed to do
The technical integration would be some significant effort to work out: do you need to run a credential management service? Can you get away with just having account recovery codes, specifying beneficiaries for specific accounts, etc? At first glance it feels like a massive amount of integration work would be needed
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.