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
145 comments
[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 163 ms ] thread- 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.
Key thing: do not put in a safe deposit box at a bank. Those are sealed once the bank determines that you’re dead.
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.
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