What happens to my accounts if I die?
The honest answer: without instructions, your family walks into a maze. Bank accounts frozen until a court decides, subscriptions charging for months, photos and documents locked in a cloud nobody can open, and a business no one knows how to run.
It's not a money problem — it's an information problem. The average family spends months reconstructing what one person carried in their head: where everything is, what gets paid when, who to call.
Account by account
- Bank accounts: without a named beneficiary, they freeze until probate — which can take months or years.
- Email and cloud (Google, Apple, photos): companies have next-of-kin processes, but they're slow — and some delete everything after months of inactivity.
- Social media: without instructions, profiles stay up indefinitely — the quiet pain of an active page for someone who's gone.
- Subscriptions: they keep auto-charging until someone hunts them down one by one in the statements.
- The business: clients unanswered, invoices uncollected, passwords to everything — the part that decays fastest.
The fix is not sharing passwords today
Handing out passwords while you're alive is a security risk that goes stale in weeks. What works is a system that stores the information encrypted TODAY and delivers it to the right people ONLY when it's truly needed — that's exactly what FamiliaLista does with its check-in system.
Your life's operations manual, ready in an afternoon
FamiliaLista stores your instructions, messages, and access — and delivers them to your people only if you're ever gone or unreachable. Via WhatsApp and email, in English and Spanish.
Start free →Familia plan from $79/year · Your family, ready. No matter what.
Frequently asked questions
Can my family access my accounts with a death certificate?
For bank accounts with a named beneficiary, yes — fairly quickly. For everything else — email, cloud, subscriptions, crypto — each company has its own slow, different process. The certificate opens doors; knowing WHICH doors exist is the real problem.
What is a dead man's switch?
A system that periodically asks you to confirm you're okay (a check-in). If you stop responding, it executes your instructions: delivering messages and access to the people you chose. That's FamiliaLista's mechanism — nothing is delivered while you keep responding.
Isn't this what a will is for?
No. A will decides WHO INHERITS, processed by a court over months. The life manual handles immediate OPERATIONS: what gets paid, where things are, who to notify — what your family needs in the first 48 hours, not month eight.
What if I'm incapacitated, not gone?
That's the most common and least planned scenario: an accident or hospitalization. FamiliaLista covers exactly that — if your life hits pause, your people receive what they need to keep your home and business running.