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.

We just rolled out a free* “Mini” accounts and 14-day free trials on all premium accounts so now you can try YouDeparted completely risk free. Check out the new accounts here. We also streamlined the sign up process so now you can literally get a YouDeparted account in mere seconds rather than minutes. We hope you like the updates!

Given that we are offering a very unique service, we want to let people take a thorough look first to try it out. With the Mini account, you can store a small number of entries and up to 1MB of space, and specify who will receive your entries if something happens to you. With the premium accounts you can store from 100 to unlimited entries and up to 5GB of pictures, movies, documents, audio, and other files. Our pricing is very competitive with many of the top online storage providers with the added benefit that we are more secure and that your account can be unlocked if something happens to you. With all accounts, you can specify which of your Recipients will receive each piece of information.

Again, we hope the updates come as welcome news, and we always appreciate any feedback or comments!

-The team at YouDeparted.com

*The account is free for 90 days. At any time you can upgrade into our basic account and all your information will be transferred.

We here at YouDeparted have talked before about how important it is for a family, no matter what kind of family it may be, to be knowledgeable about the life insurance each partner has, and who the beneficiaries are.  We have stressed the importance of having a reputable lawyer to guide you through the processes of naming beneficiaries and making sure your requests are upheld.  We have reminded you that it is very necessary that such paperwork is stored in a safe place.

Unfortunately, there are always those who want what you have given to someone else, and if you are not careful, your last requests might change in the hands of someone you least expect to betray your trust.

Please read what Panthergirl has to say about her late husband’s insurance, and how he thought he was leaving it all to his son, but ended up leaving it all to. . . .

Well, I think perhaps you’d best read it for yourself.  Then, check your own paperwork VERY carefully indeed. Then check it again.  And make sure it’s all stored in a safe, safe place.

First of all, in addition to the paperwork the deceased already had on file, in a safe place, that dictated to all survivors that he/she be cremated, there must also be a little more paperwork after the actual death.  A coroner’s office must OK each piece of paperwork as well as examine the body thoroughly.  Those of you who watch CSI will understand that after cremation, there is no possibility of an examination, JUST IN CASE there is suspicion of foul play.

How hot does the oven in your kitchen get?  I bet it’s nowhere near 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, even when you set it to “clean.”

No matter how hot the oven, and no matter how long the body is in there, there will always be a few larger bone fragments, and those go into a processor, which is sometimes call a “pulverizer” for obvious reasons.  (Its actual name is “cremulator.”)  The process takes approximately two hours.

The mixture of ashes and pulverized bones is called “cremains.”  How much does a bag of cremains weigh?  Well, a 180-pound person will produce around 9 pounds of cremains.

Unless you live in Wisconsin, your survivors may scatter your cremains to the four winds, once permission from the property owner is obtained.  Laws pertaining to state and national parks differ from location to location, and it’s always wisest to inquire before you scatter.

You do not have to purchase the urn from the mortuary.  There are no requirements as to shape, color, aesthetics, etc.  Please yourself as far as the urn is concerned, but please be sure you are following the deceased’s wishes, as well.

You are not required by any laws to hand over the urn containing cremains to a mortuary; you can carry it home with you and do with it whatever you wish.  If the deceased had particular plans in mind for his/her cremains, there had better be paperwork dictating those plans.  Otherwise, you can do a “Meet the Parents” with it if you want to.

There are even businesses that will turn some of the cremains into jewelry, statues, and knick-knacks of various shapes and sizes.  You can even pull a “Jolie” and put some cremains in a tiny vial to wear around your neck.