That’s a lovely idea, but anything like that can be solved while I am still around.
Eehhh, maybe. If you’re a famous person, probably. If you’re an average customer at a large bank, no they don’t scour the death notices to see if Jane/John Doe that died last week has an account here.
If it’s a joint box & your spouse keeps her mouth shut she could, most likely, get in with ease. I also seem to remember that, if you notify the bank that it’s after a death, the bank officer can assist/witness your accessing the box to extract a will only before they then seal it. Though this may vary by state law.
Robert_columbia, it’s a flag seal as the executor will be able to access the box once all of the proper paperwork is completed. There could be a case where John Doe has a joint box with his second wife, but his will leaves everything to his kids from first marriage. She is prevented from going back into the box to pull valuable papers, like stock certificates or the map to the buried treasure & absconding with what is not legally hers.
I just looked at my lease, and there are two clauses that seem to disagree with each other:
Nothing about searching death notices. The first few sentences sound like they’re covering their ass - if a Renter doesn’t tell them the other Renter died, they’re absolving themselves of any legal responsibility. I did just tell my wife to clean out the box first thing if I die though. Assuming she can prevent herself from leaping into my grave 
Tangentially relevant post:
I just noticed an article on Wired that approximately (and maybe more than approximately) speaks to OP’s concern:
It’s Time for You to Take the Cloud Back From Corporations by Clive Thompson, 2/28/2014.
tl;dr: Now you can run your personal private cloud server at home. This is becoming increasingly popular, and personal cloud server software is available. An excerpt:
There’s about a 90% chance that Mange’s wife and executor would be the same person. That’s the usual thing for husband/wife.
I’ve already got hardware I could potentially put to that use, but I’m not sure I would trust that as a solution - hosting my own cloud would give me greater control of the electronic privacy angle, but at the expense of increased vulnerability - a server in my house could be destroyed or stolen - if I had a sufficiently physically secure environment for it at home, I could just store the information there on paper.
Don’t overthink it, this is not a complex problem. You don’t need a personal cloud. If you really want local storage of the data, have a USB key stored in a fireproof safe. Every 6 months, take it out, update it, put it back in the safe.
When your card is cancelled after you die, that will deal with a lot of the automatic direct debits you have going out for minor things like charity, etc. So it might be a good idea to have a joint bank account for the really important stuff like utiltities, if you don’t already (for the benefit of US readers: I have the impression that joint bank accounts aren’t as common in the UK as in the US). The rest is really not that important.
When you do make a will, a good solicitor will help you decide how to help arrangements for things after your death to go easily. That’s why they exist rather than just getting a home-made will and doing it at home. Hell, even just writing something down in on a piece of paper counts, at least if your case went to probate, so there’s no harm in doing that until you get a proper will made.
Is it? I’ve mostly seen someone else put down as the executor. I mean, there’s always a chance that your partner will either die with you (if it’s a car crash or something), die before you and you don’t update the will in time, or die after you but be mentally incompetant. It’s also a bit of a burden to put on someone who will presumably be deep in the midsts of grief.
The UK money advisory service (https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/choosing-your-executor) - relevant to the OP since he lives here - recommends having two executors to account for the chances of one dying, and not having your spouse as the only executor because they will be grieving.
The only card I have is a debit card linked to our joint account - cancellation of this card won’t stop direct debits - only card payments on that number.
Direct debits are easy enough to look up with the assistance of the bank, but that will only uncover the identity of the payee - not the reason for the thing.
It makes sense to me that I should be listing all of this stuff in one ‘grab bag’ that essentially forms a checklist if I die.
Thanks - it ought to be fairly straightforward for me - my life is not complex - no previous spouses - no significant assets.
Maybe. Doing this is probably just a way to put off getting a proper will, and quite possibly a way to create hell for your spouse etc if it goes wrong.
It’s 20 years since I practiced much in the area, plus I’m not in the UK. But yes, it is in my experience. If you and your spouse have mostly joint assets, and your will has as its primary option “all to spouse” (which is the most common thing in my experience) it’s a major hassle for your spouse to have to defer to someone else about decisions concerning the house they live in, the car they drive and the household goods they use every day until the estate is finalised. So you just appoint your key beneficiary your executor.
You have alternative executors and beneficiaries for instances of where your spouse pre-deceases.
I do think there is a difference in countries there. Someone else being the executor of the will doesn’t delay anything here. At any rate, a properly-qualified solicitor sounds like someone who’d be in the best place to advise.
I didn’t mention delay. I am a solicitor although an Australian one.
What are the problems apart from delay, then? The executor can’t change the terms of the will.
I didn’t mean to cast aspersions on anyone’s qualifications - I’m not a solicitor at all - just that I’d think a solicitor (in the UK) would have the most reliable info on where to find such storage, or would know someone who did, and it sounds like one’s needed for the will anyway.
The simplest thing is for the joint owner and holder and everyday user of the property to also be the beneficiary and the executor. There is just no need for the extra layer of hassle of having to involve anyone else.
Take, say, a car. There will be forms involved that will have to be signed. The surviving spouse -if also the beneficiary and executor - may have to go through some minimal level of hassle to get the car into their name. But since they are the only person who has to sign anything or do anything or be motivated it’s probably going to go as smoothly as it can.
OK now uncle Fred is also an executor. So now you’ve got to get him to sign everything also but he has other things to do and he lives five miles away and you get him to sign and you take the form in but the signature is in the wrong spot so you have to take the form back to him because he wasn’t motivated to come down to the registration office with you blah de blah de blah. And for what?
The main difference there is that I don’t think it’s as common in the UK to buy a car on lease (except for companies). People might get a loan to buy a car, but the loan is the same as any other loan. Transferring the ownership of the car is not that simple whether you’re alive or dead.
My thoughts are:
-
There’s really two different pieces of information you want to save/pass-on: the existence of various accounts (bank, account number), and passwords to the accounts. Even without the passwords, your wife/executor could eventually get access to all the accounts, as long as they knew about them and had proof of their legitimate ownership (e.g. a copy of your death certificate and marriage license), but if someone nefarious got a hold of the existence list it wouldn’t help them much. So treat the two pieces of information differently.
-
If you store information in your house, it won’t help if you die in a house fire while at home. Consider some kind of off-site storage for critical info (like the existence list, perhaps?).
-
On the other hand, if your wife is computer illiterate, why are you worried about storing your passwords and such at home, or even in an envelope you give her?
You have two sets of information.
-
Your accounts, and how to access them. This could be as simple as a text file listing instructions for your wife, including URLs, logins, passwords, etc. Encrypt this with a key/password combination (I recommend TrueCrypt) and store it in the cloud–you’re using Skydrive and that should be fine, but to answer another question you have, yes Dropbox is free. Give your wife the key, keep another copy for yourself, update whenever you want.
-
How to access this encrypted file. You make another text file with the password to the encrypted file, instructions on how to use the encryption program, and instructions on how to use Skydrive. Store this text file on your bank’s cloud.
Your post makes no sense whatever, sorry. Firstly it’s not common (indeed it is positively rare) to buy cars on lease here either. Total non sequitur. Secondly you are explaining that its’ not that simple to transfer ownership of a car. Exactly. So having to get Uncle Fred involved so that he also has to sign forms and produce ID and whatever the heck else helps how exactly?
Sorry this has become a complete hijack, I’ll stop now.
Really. Or, have multiple distributed private personal cloud servers in several different locations: In your kitchen, and in the kitchens of several trusted friends, etc. Make sure all updated are automatically synced to all the other servers too.
Or, what he said. Just get several of those USB memory stix; keep them in several different places; update them all at once.
ETA: I just had a brilliant idea. Have multiple quantum-entangled memory sticks. So you just have to update one, and the others, wherever in the universe you’ve stored them, get instantly and automatically updated to match. I think I’ve just made a great invention! What do I win?
My bank reserves the right to rifle through the files I store there, - if I keep the encryption key alongside the instructions on where to find the encrypted data, the potential exists for one of their staff to gain access to everything
I think it would work with three sets of data:
[ol]
[li]Encrypted stuff on Skydrive.[/li][li]Instructions in plain text in a document held by my wife (i.e. in saved email)[/li][li]Encryption key in my bank’s cloud.[/li][/ol]