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Comment by pantulis | Hacker News Reader

I want to point out that, upon our death, everything externally hosted will also break down eventually when bills are not paid. I am not sure what would happen faster.

Apart from that, I am glad to see reddittors stepping up to help the guy. That's the good old internet.

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It doesn’t have to be this way: set the bills up on autopay, and have a clear list for your executor of which companies are providing which service. Autopay should keep things working long enough for your kid/parent/whoever to find the list and change the credit card numbers on the accounts.

That doesn't work for all services. Some companies will want/require the persons name to be correct but at the same time have policies that a different person can't just "take over" an account due to death.

At every level our society is very broken after we introduced computers. I'm super happy to be making money from that, though.

A UX problem that simply needs to have best practices, implemented as religiously as Agile

So choose services that are compatible with your legacy needs, just like you double check your hardware will work with linux before you buy it.

My digital assets are designed to work for at least 10 years after my death (I keep domain and hosting accounts pre-paid) and my annual dead-man's switch should ensure my succesors are given timely notice to take over or migrate any services they decide are worth perpetuating longer than that.

I would add what maybe this works in the US, but in a country with a bit better EGOV the news of your death would propagate pretty quickly. In a month, maybe two? Probably. Longer than this - no. And definitely not a year later.

I’m not sure why reliable, timely news of the death of the person who set up the account would necessarily mean the company closing the account, as long as the bills were being paid. Your estate is a legal entity.

> mean the company closing the account

The account with the money, not with the service.

> Your estate is a legal entity.

Only after the executor probated your will and therefore received the rights to manage your assets. Until then nobody can (at least legally) to do anything with the money. And while nobody would bother with an automated subscriptions (till there are enough money on the account ofc) there could be problems if the assets would be frozen until the executor would claim the rights for them. Or if the bank just outright cancel or disable the card to prevent unauthorized (hey, the guy is dead, he can't consent!) withdrawals or payments.

> as long as the bills were being paid

Not every jurisdiction is fine with the money operations from a deceased person.

EDIT: oh, and here even if you have a will signed yesterday and you are named the executor of the will you still need to wait a half of the year for the probate to complete. And IMMSMV you can ask the banks to freeze the assets, specifically till the rightful heirs would be determined. Specifically for a case when a loving niece, ex-gf, bff, whoever wouldn't be able to withdraw everything from the deceased's accounts.

Ah, the missing piece here (at least in the US) is that you always want to have a joint account with someone you trust (a kid, a spouse) so it doesn’t go into probate. Anything that needs to keep being paid after your death gets paid from that joint account.

The difference is the companies billing you will attempt to contact you - hopefully including something that will get to your heirs (snail mail is good for this!). They will also help you understand what the service is for and if you need it.

BTW, if you work for a hosting company, do your processes actually to the above for a non-technical, grieving heir?

In my experience what is done is they send you an e-mail, shut it down if you don't pay and send another mail that they delete it after x time where x is mostly a single digits days.

Something like this [0] where they try to contact you by phone and snail mail and keep your stuff online for more than half a year even if you don't pay is a paid exception and not the norm.

[0] https://www.infomaniak.com/en/secure/renewal-warranty

> everything externally hosted will also break down eventually when bills are not paid.

Most (all?) companies have some process where you show a death certificate and then get access to the account.

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