Best digital/non-digital ways of saving files for beneficaries?

April 19, 2022 8:23 AM

With the recent passing of a family member, I'm looking at preparing my own affairs. What I've been doing is various paperwork and scanning it in, so that there's digital and physical copies. What's the best way to store these files, both digitally and non-digitally, so that beneficiaries will have easy access to these files when the time comes? I'm most curious about digital ways of storing files. Do I do Dropbox or some other third party service? PDFs? I am based in the USA and so are the beneficiaries and that is unlikely to change.
posted by anonymous to Law & Government (2 answers total)

You could put it on an external hard drive and put a large label on it with like, "WILL AND LEGAL DOCUMENTS IN EVENT OF DEATH" in an easily accessible place that your most trusted top 2/3 people know about. Also, if you have a Google account, you can set a "beneficiary" to be able to access your account within a certain amount of time if you haven't been active within that account for a certain amount of time (all of this is highly tailor-able within Google). You can also personalize what your account beneficiary can access, so like, only photos, or photos and emails, etc. And, there's an option to automatically send out a final message if your account becomes inactive for those who might be trying to reach you. I think I put like "if you're reading this I'm probably dead, bye suckas and/or love you" or something to that effect. Good for you for doing this-- it's really important and your friends and family will thank you for your caring act.
posted by erattacorrige at 8:55 AM on April 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

I have all of our important papers (wills, car titles, house title, life insurance, retirement, social security, etc.) in a small, portable fireproof file similar to this. It's designed to survive the heat & water of a house fire if necessary, but is meant to be small enough to grab it and take it with you as you evacuate. It's easily accessible under the foot of my bed.

Everything that is in that box is also scanned as an archival PDF, and stored on a USB on a keyring with the spares-to-everything set of keys. The key people in our life (named beneficiaries, mostly) know where these items are and what they contain. The contents of that USB drive are also zipped in an archive, encrypted with a phrase familiar to the same key people, and stored in the cloud. Once a year, I examine and update the contents of that box, update any files that needed to be re-scanned, and I erase and rewrite that USB drive, and check its integrity. For long-term digital storage, flash memory seems to be preferred over magnetic or optical for long-term viability, but it is still by no means forever-permanent, and should be periodically tested for integrity.

A book like I'm Dead, Now What? is an inexpensive way to get a good start on this, as it contains a lot of prompts for information to fill in, and brings up a lot of points that can be easy to overlook. Throw it in the fire safe, along with everything else.

Putting all this together is a great start, but making a commitment to maintain it over time is even more important. Make it an annual thing, maybe when you file your taxes every year, so it's easy to remember. Make sure only the most recent, still in-effect policies are in there. No need to make your survivors sift through 20 years of dead-policy/not-my-bank-anymore chaff looking for the important stuff.
posted by xedrik at 9:04 AM on April 19, 2022 [3 favorites]