About us
We've done this work at every stage — before, during, and after.
LiveOnwards has helped families and organizations navigate digital succession from the earliest, most preventative planning through to the hardest forensic work after a death has already happened.
Our approach
This work sits at the intersection of technical detail and genuine loss, and we try not to flinch from either half of that. We won't tell you a lost account is "no big deal," and we won't dress up hard news to make a conversation easier. People come to us because something serious is happening — a diagnosis, a death, a business owner who's finally admitting nobody else knows the passwords — and they deserve a direct answer, not reassurance for its own sake.
At the same time, we take the technical side seriously. Digital estates are genuinely complicated: platforms handle death inconsistently, ownership of content is often murkier than people expect, and the right next step is rarely obvious. We bring structure to that mess without pretending it's simpler than it is.
Where we stop
We are not a law firm, an accounting firm, or a financial advisory practice, and we don't act as one. Questions about wills, trusts, estate distribution, tax treatment of digital assets, or contested ownership belong with a qualified attorney or financial professional — and because we've worked alongside many, we can help you find one who actually understands digital footprints rather than starting from zero.
What we do is the work in between: finding what exists, understanding what it means technically, and helping the people responsible for it make informed decisions.
Case studies
Two examples, from our talk on digital succession
Both of these are discussed at length in a talk we gave on digital succession, covering forensic work done before a death and after one. We're summarizing them briefly here; the talk itself goes into the detail.
Before death
Getting ahead of a difficult diagnosis
In one case, we worked with a family while a loved one was still living, but facing a serious health decline. The goal wasn't to prepare for an ending in the abstract — it was concrete: find the accounts, understand what mattered to the person while they could still tell us, and put a plan in place so the family wouldn't be improvising later. That preventative work made an enormous difference in what came after.
After death
Piecing together a life that had already ended
In another case, the work began only after someone had died, with no plan in place. That meant reconstructing an inventory from scratch — email trails, old devices, half-remembered usernames — and working through each platform's own process for a deceased user's account, one at a time, while supporting a family that was still absorbing the loss.