Before You Depart:
Preparing For The Unexpected

Today, Collin and I looked through our email accounts and found passwords to our online services, bank statements, financial information, contact information for just about everyone we know, and a whole lot more. When someone passes away, being able to access the email account of the deceased can be a great help to the survivors since important information can be viewed, contacts can be notified, and future emails can be retrieved. Unless you have the login information, obtaining access to an email account of the deceased typically requires death certificates, powers of attorney, and long waiting periods for all the paper work to go through.

For instance, here are the steps necessary to obtain access to a Gmail account of the deceased:

1. Your full name and contact information, including a verifiable email address.
2. The Gmail address of the individual who passed away.
3a. The full header from an email message that you have received at your verifiable email address, from the Gmail account in question. (To obtain the header from a message in Gmail, open the message, click ‘More options,’ then click ‘Show original.’ Copy everything from ‘Delivered- To:’ through the ‘References:’ line. To obtain headers from other webmail or email providers, please refer to http://www.spamcop.com/help_with_headers/)
3b. The entire contents of the message.
4. A copy of the death certificate of the deceased.
5. A copy of the document that gives you Power of Attorney over the Gmail account.
6. If you are the parent of the individual, please send us a copy of the Birth Certificate if the Gmail account owner was under the age of 18. In this case, Power of Attorney is not required.

In order to make the whole process infinitely simpler and quicker for your family if something happens to you, we have a special “Passwords” category built right into all YouDeparted accounts. Just like every other type of entry, your Passwords are encrypted with military-grade 256 bit AES, so you can rest assured they are safely and securely stored in your YouDeparted.com account. Recording your email passwords and designating who should receive them is very easy to do with YouDeparted, and will ensure that your family will not have to deal with complicated paperwork and waiting periods.

Early this morning, a powerful 6.7-magnitude earthquake shook northwestern Japan resulting in at least three deaths and hundreds of injuries. According to an article in the New York Times, the devastating quake destroyed about 300 buildings in the city of Kashiwazaki and “flattened dozens of wooden houses and triggered a fire at a nuclear power plant.” Our hearts go out to everyone in Japan affected by this disaster.

Earthquakes are simply a matter of fact in many parts of the world and especially in densely populated Japan. Here in the western United States we are no strangers to earthquakes either. Take a look at the map above that shows faults and recent earthquakes in California/Nevada. We do have a few faults running around us here on the north shore of Tahoe.

Living in an earthquake prone area means we must accept the reality of the situation and be prepared for chance that one will actually happen. A recent report placed the probability of a major earthquake occurring in the Bay Area in the next 30 years at greater than 62%!

So if you live where the ground may unexpectedly throw your life into turmoil at any time, you most certainly should have your essentials in order and in a safe place.

The story about us in Reuters I mentioned yesterday is starting to be picked up around the world! Thousands of visitors are coming from every corner of the Earth, including listeners of the radio station LAfm in Columbia, readers of MYTECH in Italy, 20minutos in Spain, Reuters in India, iTnews in Australia, and Times Colonist in Canada, just to mention a few!

The desire to protect one’s family is universal, and no matter where our members come from, they undoubtedly want to be sure the people they leave behind will be alright. An unexpected death can shatter a family and leave them struggling to pick up the pieces for years, so we encourage everyone to be prepared, wherever you are.

We created YouDeparted to enable people to prevent the confusion and devastating financial crises families often face when an unexpected event or death occurs. Take some time to really think about what your family will need if something happens to you. Then consider how much easier the transition will be for them if you have created a set of instructions to guide them, and left behind your final wishes and messages of reassurance and advice. Our service is a great place to get everything organized and ready in case the unexpected does happen.

It is a great idea to leave specific instructions in case you are incapacitated. An advance directive tells your doctor what kind of care you would like to have if you become unable to make medical decisions yourself (if you are in a coma for instance). Advance directives generally fall into three categories: living will, health care proxy and power of attorney. It is very important to make your wishes known so that your family will know exactly what you want.

A very sad example when advance directives would have saved a lot of people a lot of anguish, time and money, is the last several years of Theresa Marie “Terri” Schiavo’s life. After she collapsed in 1990 and was diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state (PVS), huge controversy erupted regarding whether or not she should be taken off life support. After fifteen years of endless controversy, court battles, injunctions, new laws, and overturned laws, her feeding tube was removed and she passed away on March 31, 2005. Terri was very young when she became incapacitated, so it is not surprising that she did not have advanced directives or a living will. Had she, her husband, family and the courts would have known exactly what her wishes were and the whole ordeal would have been avoided. Rest in peace, Terri.

Here is a description of the types of advanced health care directives:

Living Will: A living will specifies the type of treatment you would want depending on how sick you are. For example, you would describe the type of care you want if you have an illness you are unlikely to recover from, or if you are permanently unconscious. A living will usually tells your doctor that you don’t want certain kinds of treatment, but they can also specify that you do want all possible treatment regardless of your condition. Laws regarding living wills are different in every state, so be sure to look up your local regulations. Click the thumbnail below to see a pdf example of what a living will might look like:

(Note: Do not use this as a guide to create a real living will!)

Health Care Proxy: This is a legal document that designates another person to make health care decisions for you if you become incapacitated. Your health care proxy essentially has the same rights to request and refuse treatment that you would have if you were capable of communicating your wishes.

Durable Power of Attorney: Legally assigning power of attorney to someone else will allow them to make bank transactions, sign Social Security checks, apply for disability, and complete other transactions in your name.

Making You Advanced Health Care Directives Known:

In order for your wishes to be followed, your directives documents must be legal. Generally this requires proper legal writing, notarization, and witnesses. Laws vary by state so be sure to consult with your physician and/or attorney. If something does happen to you, it is important for your family to know where to find your directives and how to use them. Members of our service, YouDeparted, can store their advanced health care directive information in their account in the “Directives” category. This category is special as Recipients to a members account can view them while the member is still alive.

When we first came up with the idea to create YouDeparted, we were primarily thinking about how useful it would be when someone passed away. The Angora Fire in South Lake Tahoe serves as a terrifying reminder that getting our lives organized is absolutely necessary for everyone. Beyond preparing for the immediate life or death concern of escaping a natural disaster, we should all think about how we have financially prepared. Right now, the unfortunate citizens in the path of the fire are being evacuated and have just minutes to gather their belongings and flee to safety, but hopefully many of them took steps to prepare for the disaster in advance.

Here are some recommended steps:

1. Keep an accurate record of your personal belongings with photos or videos. These records will help you make claims on items lost in a fire or other disaster. Keep these records in a safe place such as your YouDeparted account and/or safe deposit box.
2. Review your homeowners’ insurance and make sure it covers the full cost of replacing your home.
3. Determine the exact replacement cost for your home, and talk to your agent if it seems too low.
4. Keep copies of important documents.
5. Backup your photo collections.
6. Formulate a disaster plan. Imagine if a disaster happened tomorrow, then think about everything you would have to take care of. Create your plan, get everything you can think of organized and in order, then keep the information in a safe place.

We hope you are never faced with devastating walls of flames like our neighbors across the lake! Remember to be prepared for the unexpected especially if you live in a place prone to a fire, earthquake, flood, tornado, land slide, hurricane, tsunami, or other disaster.

Here is a photo taken from the office at 5:30PM today: