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You may want to put your passwords in your estate plan

On Behalf of | Apr 8, 2022 | Estate Planning |

Imagine that you passed away today. You know all of your passwords and login information for bank accounts, social media, storage devices, investment portfolios, insurance policies and much more. Or, you at least know where you have written out these passwords so that you can access them if you need it. Some browsers will automatically save passwords so that, once you’re logged into your main account, you can use that to log into everything else.

But would anyone else know how to do this? It seems easy to you, like second nature, but your family may be completely in over their heads, unable to access any of these accounts. This can be problematic for them as they’re trying to go through your assets, and it can also be emotionally stressful if they want sentimental items that you have stored online. This could include things like photos and videos.

You don’t want all of these things to be lost, and that’s why it may be wise to put these passwords and other login information into your estate plan.

Does your family even know what to look for?

Another part of this to consider is that your family may not even know what to look for or may not understand what assets are being lost. This list not only gives them access, but it helps them know what they should be looking for in the first place.

For instance, one woman pointed out that she had purchased approximately 150 different domain names. As a business owner, it was valuable to her to have a variety of domain names for different projects. But she also added that even her husband probably didn’t know which names she had purchased. It could even be the case that he didn’t know she had done it to start with. It would be very easy for him to just lose control over these names and never know that he had lost what could prove to be a valuable asset in the future.

Setting it up

As digital assets become more common and we store more of our information online, it will only become more important to understand all the steps to take to set up an estate plan like this.

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