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Comment by sdevonoes | Hacker News Reader

The most important asset I have is my bank account. In case of death, wife can take over (the only thing needed from wife is to proof she's my wife... so pretty much her ID card and marriage papers). That's it. Subscriptions? GitHub account with private side projects? Digital libraries? HN account? Email? All of that is not that important. If my wife has access to my bank account she can either transfer all of it to hers and effectively cancelling all my subscriptions or reject individual subscriptions manually.

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I agree, but also make sure your life insurance is setup properly along with retirement/brokerage/crypto accounts.

I would also suggest things like your primary Google and/or Apple account to make sure she ends up with access to photo libraries and the like.

After that, most things are less important.

A note on photos: If you use Google Photos you can have photos with a specific person automatically added to a shared album. So my wife can always see every photo I take of her or our daughter. I just did it for day to day convenience but it'll also come in handy if I pass since she'll have all the most important photos already.

Though after seeing this thread I went ahead and just gave her access to my photos once I go inactive using this service: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en

Yep, 95% of anyone's needs in this regard can be taken care of by a spouse or relative, possibly with the aid of a death certificate. I highly doubt anyone would be interested in taking over most of my digital files.

What if you have children? In Turkey the bank account can be taken over only by legal inheritors, and all of them should be present together physically at the same time in the bank with a document, most of the time obtained from notary, called inheritance document (plus a document that shows that there is no debt). Inheritors in a normal family are spouse and children. Ratio for inheritance for a children and spouse are different. Spouse gets most of the inheritance.

There is the situation where you and your spouse both die in m accident. Depending on whether you have kids you might want a Plan B as well.

Having a will is the correct Plan B.

It needs to be Plan A, as well. But a shortcut to get access to your accounts without having to go through a will and lawyer will be appreciated by your wife if only you die.

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