Preparing for the unimaginable.

[Sigmamark7]

Long story short - a good friend and the husband of my wife’s best friend, had a catastrophic cardiac event in the early hours of last Tuesday while on holiday in Spain and died. He was 57.
They had been in the remote villa for a day. His wife had no idea what the address was, nor did she know how to contact the emergency services. Fortunately, due to a delay in their flight, a friend who lives in Spain had been in touch with the Villa owner to advise their late arrival and knew the address, so was able to get to the villa and get the emergency services there and provide support, but regrettably there was nothing that could be done to save him.
I guess most couples have one person who arranges things like accommodation, flights, insurance etc and most of the information is on their phone.
My wife’s friend didn’t know how to access her husband’s phone, but the emergency crew unlocked it using his fingerprint, so it was possible to get the information needed, but the phone has now locked and so a lot of necessary information is now unobtainable.
So the learning points are, to ensure as a minimum that you share all the travel details, address details, insurance details and emergency services contact details with your wife, partner or traveling companions before you travel.
There are clearly many more issues she now faces, including repatriation of his body and trying to untangle all of his personal finances, insurances etc, because he used to deal with all of the domestic affairs at home.
If anyone knows how to unlock a Samsung phone without the code or knows how to get it done, I’d be grateful to hear.
Finally, if you need to tell someone that you love them, do it today because you aren’t guaranteed a tomorrow.

[Stick Legs]

Excellent advice.

Thank you.

[PBCD]

Can't help with the Samsung issue I'm afraid, but my wife and I know the passcodes
for each others iphones and iPADs for this reason (not just unexpected death, but one
of us being incapacitated, in a coma, etc)

Not nice to think about, but I think you need to once you hit 55 or so...

[MesoForm]

We have a joint email account which helps for things like this. Set it up to organise our wedding but it proves handy for hotels, etc.

[ClaphamGT3]

This worries me to be frank. I do all our finances and domestic admin. I do try to talk to my wife about it but she never wants to know.

I try to keep everything in good order, well filed (physically and electronically) and logical but, if anything happened to me, Mrs C would have absolutely no idea about how our financial and administrative life runs

[cliffords]

Not on the same scale ,I fell off a ladder about 6 weeks ago and ended up quite poorly in hospital for ten days .

My wife of 35 years and competent and resourceful had to do a whole heap of home stuff,she had never done before. We had literally split the jobs and not accounted for a disaster.

Since I am back we have been sharing a lot more of the tasks . We have made a detailed inventory of documents and accounts etc .
We already have wills but we are now doing POA for each other.

Things change in an instant and we now have a box file marked. I am dead.
We are filling it as we think of stuff that would be needed.

[K87]

You provide excellent advice and guidance Sig, thank you.


Personally, I am in a situation where Mrs K will not talk about such things including health, money, planning or many other similar things and I have made repeated attempts to sit down with her, notebook each and have some point of reference. A classic was when I had a heart attack in the middle of a town centre, I was laid on the ground waiting for an ambulance, I rang her to tell her what was happening and all she said was 'OK'.

I am older than she is and likely to go first, my health isn't great. It is tempting to simply not pass on any PINs, codes or the like on the basis of 'you had your chance.'

As you will have gathered, we are not close.

[valiant]

ClaphamGT3 said:

This worries me to be frank. I do all our finances and domestic admin. I do try to talk to my wife about it but she never wants to know.

I try to keep everything in good order, well filed (physically and electronically) and logical but, if anything happened to me, Mrs C would have absolutely no idea about how our financial and administrative life runs

Similar here. I tend to take care of the domestic admin and financials but we have one of those plastic lever arch files where all active accounts and their passwords are printed out and updated once or twice a year so if anything happened to me, at least she’d be able to access stuff.

Not the most high tech or secure but it works for us.

[ExBoringVolvoDriver]

valiant said:

ClaphamGT3 said:

This worries me to be frank. I do all our finances and domestic admin. I do try to talk to my wife about it but she never wants to know.

I try to keep everything in good order, well filed (physically and electronically) and logical but, if anything happened to me, Mrs C would have absolutely no idea about how our financial and administrative life runs

Similar here. I tend to take care of the domestic admin and financials but we have one of those plastic lever arch files where all active accounts and their passwords are printed out and updated once or twice a year so if anything happened to me, at least she d be able to access stuff.

Not the most high tech or secure but it works for us.

We have something similar although I probably need to update it. My wife would probably be able to access most of our stuff as many of the passwords are stored on the passwords app on the iPads and she knows the password.

[Warhavernet]

Sound advice indeed.

My sister's husband died suddenly a few years back and he did all the financial stuff so working through who were the insurers of the house, how to access the joint bank account, who supplied her house with broadband and electricity had to be sifted from piles of invoices, bank statements and his laptop. What we did find out that the house hadn't been insured for years and her late husband had secretly gifted his brother £40000 [ mostly the proceeds of the sale of my sister's flat ] from the joint account to pay off his gambling debts.
Secrets and lies.

[Randy Winkman]

A good topic. I once went out cycling one morning and woke up two days later in intensive care. It was over a month before I got home again. I tend to leave the house with some sort of contingency for if things don't go as planned. It usually isn't the slightest bit difficult or inconvenient.

I'm not in the slightest religious but I like the saying "inshallah". People probably know it's Arabic for "God willing" but I just like it as a reminder that you can say "I'm going to do X, Y and Z" but it's good to acknowledge that we aren't ourselves in control of everything. As I say, I don't believe God is either but that's not the point for me. I wonder if there's a nice alternative to "inshallah" that isn't spiritual?

[9xxNick]

The OP makes some very good points indeed. Every couple needs a secure method of recording PINs and passwords that both can access if needs be, and which can be used even if they're abroad. The exact solution may vary but having nothing could prove highly problematic or worse.

A list of accounts, investments and so on is also important.

[Cudd Wudd]

For iPhone/ iOS users, it's worth setting up a legacy contact:

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/102631

Go to settings, click on your name, go to sign in & security, and you should find it there.

Android has something similar I think which I'll try to find.

But the above should help with access to data and cloud storage in the event of your passing when the phone can otherwise become locked down.

[Cudd Wudd]

I've not done the android equivalent but a quick AI search shows as:

Android does not have a single, built-in device menu named "Legacy Contact" like Apple does. Instead, Android uses your connected Google Account via the Inactive Account Manager tool to let a trusted person access your data if your account stops being used.

[98elise]

valiant said:

ClaphamGT3 said:

This worries me to be frank. I do all our finances and domestic admin. I do try to talk to my wife about it but she never wants to know.

I try to keep everything in good order, well filed (physically and electronically) and logical but, if anything happened to me, Mrs C would have absolutely no idea about how our financial and administrative life runs

Similar here. I tend to take care of the domestic admin and financials but we have one of those plastic lever arch files where all active accounts and their passwords are printed out and updated once or twice a year so if anything happened to me, at least she d be able to access stuff.

Not the most high tech or secure but it works for us.

Same here. Our finances are complicated because we have have a variety of investment/pension incomes and I deal with all the household bills.

I keep everything documented and in a set of folders on our bookshelf. My executors also know about the folders so if I were to die there are detailed records of everything from bank accounts to insurance documents.

When we dealt with my partners parents deaths it was a nightmare because they had no organisation when it came to bills, bank accounts etc.

[cliffords]

I have similar to above and I do have a concern about security in the event of a house break in or intruder.

[Randy Winkman]

cliffords said:

I have similar to above and I do have a concern about security in the event of a house break in or intruder.

Security is something to think about but just to say that I found out on PH a couple of years ago about a book you can buy and fill-in providing loads of important information for you family/executor when you die. To go alongside your will. Not for passwords but just basic stuff about bank accounts and things like that.

[DT1975]

I have a folder where my wife (or my son) will find everything they need in relation to the house, Investments, passwords the lot etc. In the instance mentioned by the OP (on holiday) my wife can also access my phone. Everything relating to a trip or holiday is under a folder in my gmail account. I even send myself e mails with random stuff written on it and store it under the label in question.

I know I sound a right smart arse but I'm not, we haven't even done a will yet which is nuts considering some of the stuff we do on holidays.

[BlackTails]

ClaphamGT3 said:

This worries me to be frank. I do all our finances and domestic admin. I do try to talk to my wife about it but she never wants to know.

I try to keep everything in good order, well filed (physically and electronically) and logical but, if anything happened to me, Mrs C would have absolutely no idea about how our financial and administrative life runs

Snap. I keep meaning to write a handbook/manual on how everything works, where to find stuff, what to do and when, etc, but there is always something more important to do instead.

[mike13]

There are books on Amazon for less than a tenner, I’m dead what now is the usual type of heading. My niece knows where it is listing bank accounts, insurance policies, utilities, pension providers etc.

I write in pencil as house insurance, investments etc change yearly.