Estate Planning
Access to our online accounts are an important part of estate planning and something you should talk to your lawyer about. Below you’ll find some examples of the kinds of accounts your executor might need to help resolve your estate:
The Best Plan: Create a List
The best plan is probably the simplest. Just make a list of your user names, passwords, PINs, and related accounts, and then make sure the right person knows how to get access to it. The hard parts are remembering all the passwords you’ve accumulated, and keeping the list up to date. You’ll need a secure place to keep the paper, a safety deposit box, or a digital password manager that the executor or your lawyer has access to.
Be sure to include information on how to access:
- computers
- Internet service providers or Web hosting services
- email accounts (email providers all have their own rules about access after a death; some allow next of kin access, some won’t give access to anyone)
- blogs
- photo storage sites
- social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn
- online subscriptions (for example, magazine subscriptions that renew automatically or subscriptions to sports websites)
- financial sites (banks and brokerages) where you have money saved or invested
- mortgage providers
- college savings and retirement plans
- companies (such as banks or utilities) where you have set up automatic bill-paying
- software applications (for example, tax return or legal document preparation programs or websites), and
- cell phones.
- Online documents, like Google Docs or Zoho Docs.
