Passing on your "digital legacy".

[Haggisman]

A close colleague of mine passed away suddenly yesterday, and while we weren't particularly close outside of work, we had been out for a few lunches, drinks etc. several times with a couple of other guys from the team, and he was probably the person at work I had the closest connection with.

He was a really lovely guy, only slightly younger than me, wife, 2 young kids around the same age as mine - from what I could tell an awesome dad and husband. Similar taste in music, films etc. as me, so it's hit very close to home, I can't stop thinking about the situation his family must be in right now, and it's made me think about what would happen to my partner and kids if something were to happen to me.

They'd be financially taken care of; I have a couple of life insurance policies, plus death in service through work, so the mortgage would be fully paid along with enough left over to cover several years with no additional income, but I've been wondering how best to share all of the critical information about things like bank accounts, utilities, insurance etc.

My partner is quite scatty, and not particularly tech savvy, so I deal with most of the admin stuff; she wouldn't have a clue who our home/pet/car insurance etc./gas & electric/TV/internet are with, when they expire, passwords, account numbers, any of that, so I want to collate all of that information in a relatively secure way, but easy to access in an emergency.

The "easiest" for her would be a printed document with all the details, but that comes with the high likelihood of being lost and/or quickly outdated.
Anything online has the risk of a) her forgetting how to access it, and b) again with the security implications.
A USB stick with a document on it is maybe an option, but again there's the risk of it getting lost.

I have a 1Password account, which it would be handy to give her access to, and I could add a lot of the information in there, but short of writing down the master password for her (which has it's own security implications), I'm not sure how to do that.

Any suggestions on what you guys (and girls) have in place for such an eventuality would be highly appreciated!

 

[Haggisman]

To be completely honest, your wife needs to get with the times, because if something does happen, she will need these skills in the future, unless someone else is going to arrange everything for her.

While I completely agree, and it's something I'm going to try to work on with her, I'd also like to make it as easy as possible for the peace of mind that her technical ability (or lack thereof) at an extremely emotional time isn't going to cause her even more stress!

I have a similar setup, the wife wouldn't know anything and I also think anything technical/with a risk of her forgetting how to access might not be workable for her. Ultimately I think there is no easy answer, my approach now you've raised this and I've realised it applies to me is going to be to approach my wife about it with a view to making a conscious effort to work on improving the elements that she is "deficient" in, in order to make an actually robust solution workable.

Yes, as above, I could probably do with handing over at least some of the responsibilities to her, if for nothing else than to "train" her into being a bit more comfortable with it in the event that anything does happen

It all boils down to keeping it up to date and have a writen list which is in her bank file. Not good if you get burgled.

I'm wondering what the real risk is of a burglary - your average thief is unlikely to be looking for random bits of paper, so unless it's in a really obvious place that screams "I'm important", I would imagine that particular threat to be minimal.

My mate said he will delete those "special" folders on my hard drive when I die. Now there's a true friend.

After taking some copies for his own use of course!

 

[Haggisman]

I use Bitwarden with my missus as a trusted emergency contact. If I die, she can take over my account which will give her access to everything including any 2FA. I've shared my finance spreadsheet with her so she can see any accounts we have and also have an old school emergency sheet that I keep up to date and she knows where it is. It's a good job I'm anal and like being organised, I'm fairly confident she shouldn't have any issues getting onto anything. I've just got to hope only one of us kicks the bucket though, as if both of us do, my family will have no idea what to do.

A good point - I think it's probably a conversation to get my 13 year old involved in as well, just in case...

 

[Haggisman]

I lost my dad in Feb 22, quite suddenly, he was only 58. Saw what my step-mum had to go through. I think with a phone call, providing proof such as a wedding certificate and death certificate she was able to get access to everything she needed quite quickly. People dying and spouses needing access, unfortunately, must be a pretty 'standard' practice for any sort of utilities companies/banks etc.

I wouldn't worry too much.

Part of the problem is knowing who to make that phone call to in the first place!

 

[Haggisman]

So far my thoughts are:

• Printed copy of my 1Password "emergency kit" in a safe & inconspicuous location in the house, with a backup copy at my mum's.
• Printed copy of life insurance policy details, which aren't going to change any time soon.
• Details of bank accounts, utilities, insurance etc. added to 1Password and kept up to date.
• Both my partner & oldest "trained" on how to to use the emergency kit to gain access to my 1Password account.

Will also look into the family account and what additional functionality this offers - I believe I can share vault items with other members, so if I can do that with the various account details then that will make life a lot easier.

 

[Haggisman]

You can create a 'family' 1Password account and your wife can have access via there - that's what I do. We have certain 'shared' passwords, bank details, car/home/life insurance, all logins etc. for all of the stuff that should be shared and then our own personal vaults (my wife isn't exactly chomping at the bit to login to my Overclockers forum account) - but when you're part of the family vault you can get access to everything in another family members vault if required. 1Password currently does it via their support and has a dedicated area for it where you'd submit the necessary documents (access key, death certificate etc.).

Thanks, I did look into it more and I think that will do the vast majority of what I'm after, so I've set up a family account and once they've been "trained", I'll move stuff to a shared vault

Also, I know it's not the point of your post, but hopefully you're doing ok. A colleague of mine really unexpectedly passed away in November last year and it knocked the stuffing out of a lot of us. I still find myself now almost expecting him to be in certain meetings, he was just a really good guy.

Thanks, I'll be ok, it's just been a major shock to us all, logged on this morning and the last message on discord was from him, keep seeing his initials on tickets etc. had to give the kids and my partner a massive hug last night after I found out