Guidelines for choosing your legacy contact on digital accounts?

March 5, 2023 8:21 AM

While working on setting up a legacy contact for my Apple ID, I wanted to suggest to other people to do the same, but stopped myself when it occurred to me that some people might not have good instincts about who they choose as the legacy contact. Does anyone good guidelines for making these choices?

An AskMeFi question last year touched on this subject and made it clear there are issues to think through. My own choice is clear (and I'm not asking for myself), but choosing a legacy contact might be a more challenging decision for other people. Possible reasons include:

• someone may be in a relationship where it would be better if their partners did not get named as the legacy contact, and maybe it would be useful to prompt them to think about that
• there may be legal or estate planning implications
• there may be other issues that I can't imagine

This may be overthinking it, but I'm just worried that people without a lot of experience may choose unwisely. Before suggesting that other people (e.g., at work, friends) set up legacy contacts, I'd like to help them avoid making a hasty decision about who they name.

posted by StrawberryPie to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

It should be someone you trust, who has discussed the issues with you, and who has agreed to be named.

A couple of decades ago, I read about an agreement made between three good friends: if anything were to happen to one of them, the others were instructed to come into his apartment and get rid of his collection of pornographic videos, magazines, etc. so that none of it would come to the attention of his family members when they went about the sad business of resolving his affairs.

Physical media was the focus, at that time.

There are some landmines involved in that kind of arrangement, though. Removing evidence of legal activities that would cause distress to your loved ones is one thing. Removing evidence of criminal behavior is another.
posted by yclipse at 10:05 AM on March 5, 2023

Not sure this is all that complicated.

The kinds of people who think about the need for a legacy contact are the kind of people who think about the need for a will, the need to put their affairs in order (including what to do with their porn collection, personal correspondence or personal journals that may upset people) and they take steps towards those ends, including making a will, identifying suitable executors, legacy contacts etc. -> they'll list legacy contacts that make sense. If you want to help them think that through get them to think about who they'd list as executors. If they don't trust their executors to be tech savvy enough to understand what a legacy contact is, they should probably reconsider the executors they have identified because sorting out an estate requires somebody to be able to cope with virtual information at this point. A lot of people have bank accounts and such for which they no longer receive physical statements for example.

Everybody else may agree that they should get round to making a will, to sorting out their affairs but they won't get round to doing these things or won't get round to doing them in a way that is helpful. Not sure it makes any difference if the information and possessions they are therefore not dealing with is physical or digital.
posted by koahiatamadl at 2:27 AM on March 6, 2023