In the early COVID days, a friend got really sick and then in a comma for 4 weeks, followed by a few weeks where he couldn't talk.
His wife, who also helped with running his business (small shop, 4 employees), tried to get access to the business bank account in order to pay the bills. Cloud services would expire, services shutdown, they would lose a lot of clients.
She couldn't pay the bills, because while she was his next of kin, that only works if he dies.
So anyway, having procedures for death is one thing, but don't forget scenarios like being in a coma for a few weeks, or being kidnapped, etc.
This is a hard realization that not many people internalize. Incapacitation can actually be more painful for your loved ones and business associates than your death. Death has a lot of ritual / legal step in society, but incapacitation requires you to prepare for the scenario. Having some step-by-steps and legal work done will make everyone's life simpler.
Except everything these days is moving to SaaS webservices, most of which are moving too fast and breaking too many things to bother with a process for delegated access with or without power-of-attorney (or with having any customer support process at all). This will sort itself out in the coming decades, but for now, you have to manage this on your own.
this was a big issue for me with crypto exchanges last decade. they could not understand the concept of anything besides a single-user personal account. KYC can only be tied to one account.
have a trust? LLC? non-profit? corporation? anything? whoosh, right over their heads
now? the exchanges all have this, pretty easy to onboard a whole hedge fund onto them now. but the crypto tax services, single-user personal account incapable of understanding other tax circumstances. there are ways (like exporting data to more robust software), just wish it was easier already.
Not to mention simple 99/1% split co-ownership of an actual corporation, so legal power to act on behalf of the business without the ability to takeover full ownership pre-death.
This comment needs to be pinned. We've had a similar situation where the person in coma took a bunch of loans in secret. We don't know why. We couldn't access any information. The bank doesn't reveal any of the process. We don't know if there is hidden property that we can inherit. We don't know if it was gambling, or charity, or if he was paying for someone's addiction. The whole family had to pool money to save the widow. He died a few weeks later and we have no idea where all the money went 'till this day.
A lot of people leveraged into cryptocurrencies the past few years. So if money seems to have disappeared, it could be something to look into if this person had ever talked about it. If he/she did, I'd be loooking for handwritten twelve word phrases, using the grep/find commands to search electronic records, etc...
His wife, who also helped with running his business (small shop, 4 employees), tried to get access to the business bank account in order to pay the bills. Cloud services would expire, services shutdown, they would lose a lot of clients.
She couldn't pay the bills, because while she was his next of kin, that only works if he dies.
So anyway, having procedures for death is one thing, but don't forget scenarios like being in a coma for a few weeks, or being kidnapped, etc.