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This is something you should bring up with your bank. In Finland if you have a joint account with your spouse there is a difference if the account is listed as "X and Y" vs "X or Y".

In the first case the account is inaccessible for a fair bit of time if either X or Y dies. In the latter case both can always access it.

My partner's aunt got hit by this when her husband was 100% incapacitated and hospitalized. She couldn't even pay her rent or buy groceries, because she couldn't prove her husband agreed with the spending.

We switched our account to the "or" style really fast after that.

I’m in Finland as well and have never heard of it! Would you mind sharing the Finnish names for these types of accounts?

Basically an account can have either one owner and one person with a permission to access it OR it can be co-owned.

If you just have the access permission and the main owner is incapacitated or dead, your access is not valid anymore and it's a huge hassle to get access to the funds.

You want the co-owned style where both have equal rights to the funds on the account. The easiest way to check it is just to contact your bank and make sure it's set up that way the exact terminology seems to vary a bit between banks.

One of the terms I've seen in the US is "Joint Tenants With Right of Survivorship (JTWROS)" but check the details.

It's much rarer now because checks are basically gone, but you used to be able to get accounts that would require both signatures on the check, not just one.

Most valuable comment on here so far.

Fundamentally, the OP isn't faced with a tech problem. People need to start with greater awareness of power of attorney, wills, and probate.

In a probate situation, your loved ones don't have to know all your passwords and so on. They do need to know where your assets are so they can contact the right organisations to claim them. And you can make that process easier for them by avoiding having small accounts all over the place.

I agree that this isn't a tech problem. The only part that the tech is for is for having feedback on the document. It is meant to be printed out and not stored online. There is a spot on the document for a power of attorney in fact.

I can only speak for people in the United States of America but another option is a living trust. This avoids giving power of attorney until a medical professional has declared one unable to consent. The document can have well thought out instructions created far in advance detailing who has what powers and what properties/items may be transferred in advance of and/or upon ones mortality. This avoids some family drama when people make sub-optimal decisions. A living trust can mitigate some of the drama and legal battles. Assigning trust managers can also mean there are people looking out for you and/or family members when you are incapacitated, limiting how much money is paid to whom at what intervals typically limited to a number of years after your passing. A lawyer can walk one through the most common issues specific to them and ensure it is in the legal documents. This is also a good way to protect properties and bank accounts but that is a whole topic in and of itself.

Not just incapacitated, but also unable to reasonably communicate. I was suddenly and unexpectedly thrown into jail. How do you communicate all of this information to people on the outside? Especially as your communications are monitored at all times, so reading out logins over the phone can be very detrimental.

I lost all but one of the hundreds of domains I owned, 10 years of email, and of the thousands of online accounts I had when I was locked up, only about 3 were accessible after I got out due to changes in security policies or email addresses (I'm looking at you Gmail) that I could no longer log into despite having the username and password.

This problem is only going to get worse as more sites, sensibly, require MFA. As long as you are compos mentis and have physical access to your devices everything is grand, but once that breaks down, you (or your loved ones) might be screwed.

It's likely that there's no real way to solve this without a trusted associate, but it has to be an associate you'd literally trust with everything in your life.

Then you can give them access to 1Password or similar in some way.

I won't go into details but I'm dealing with a somewhat similar situation. If you love your family and want them to make decisions for you when you're incapacitated instead of strangers who will likely be trying to take advantage of the situation, GET AN ESTATE ATTORNEY. One at a large and respected firm with a solid track record. You will be making a minuscule investment compared to the cost of things going sideways. So much trouble for you and your family will be saved during an already difficult time.

Not sure if anyone on HN knows: do wills work for medical emergencies too? Because I would assume you could setup an emergency power of attorney for such a scenario. It is ridiculous that you cannot sell your home if your spouse is incapable of consenting.

I imagine it varies by jurisdiction. Here in the UK you can create something called a "living will" but it's mostly about how you want to be treated in terms of your health (think DNR type stuff) and living arrangements and isn't legally enforceable on its own like a regular will – certainly not for something like selling jointly owned property: https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/money-legal/lega...

I imagine if we ever get around to accepting euthanasia as a society the idea around a living will need to become formalised. For decades my dad was very clear he would prefer to be dead than exist in the state he is now but sadly the law insists he, or whatever is left of him, must suffer.

I can only speak for the UK, but here, there are two types of power of attorney: the health one designates someone to make decisions about medical treatment if the subject is unable to; the finance one allows the attorney to manage the assets of the subject when needed.

The key point is that the whole process should be far easier if these things are setup in advance, while the person is still able to make their wishes clear, i.e. while they can still say who they trust to make decisions for them.

Not a lawyer, but in the US there are typically separate power of attorney documents for financial vs medical decisions. If you search for your state and medical or financial power of attorney you should find standard forms for them and see what they cover.

My mother, who is now in memory care due to Alzheimer's, knew long ago what was in store for her (her mother and one of her sisters also had it) and planned accordingly long ago. She has a simple but comprehensive will...and most importantly at the moment, two powers of attorney that give the designee (me, in this case) control over both her medical/daily living decisions and her financial decisions. The weeks surrounding the day the doctor activated her power of attorney were hectic, but far easier than they would have been without her prior planning.

She'd also made my sister and I co-owners on her bank account, so we had no difficulty accessing money for her care in the short term.

I’m sorry you are going through this. My family went through this as well, with my grandfather.

His stroke was one of the emotionally hardest times of my life. He had lost language entirely as well - and most movement.