I heard a number of stories of people passing away, and their loved ones have to figure out how to navigate their digital “estate”. Things like email credentials, bank accounts, crypto wallets, logins for personal devices, etc. For example, I have a good friend whose husband passed away unexpectedly, and she couldn’t get Apple to unlock his laptop for months, until she provided a death certificate and jumped through additional hoops.

I fell down a rabbit hole of checklists, methods, and technology, and was curious what other people were doing to leave digital assets behind. I’m looking for something that will be privacy-oriented, but still provide access to people who may not be very tech-savvy.

What do other people do? Especially from a technology perspective?

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[–] 18 points 5 days ago*

#1 thing is to make sure all accounts have beneficiaries. Accounts should have a primary beneficiary (your spouse), and if there is the ability to make a secondary beneficiary, see if they will divide it among any children you have . This is of paramount importance.

I know someone who passed away suddenly, and did not have a beneficiary on his "play money" stock account. His widow had to go through a lot of hoops to get access to it.

From there, I am a big believer in paper. I want those statements coming to the house. I file them all, and my wife knows where I put them. If I were to go poof , I'm sure she (with a lot of help from her siblings) would make sure nothing goes unpaid.

The Crypto is a different story, of course. When you can Be Your Own Bank, there are no beneficiaries or contingencies: it's all keys. I have a bit of crypto in a HW wallet. But, years ago I moved some BTC to Coinbase, and it's still there after all these years. I am thinking of moving the rest, just to make it easier for people to sell if I do go poof. Yeah , Not Your Keys, Not Your Coins. But it would be tragic if my crypto got lost because I bit it and nobody knew how to operate my wallet.

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