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.

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.