Questions people usually ask before they call us

Because it doesn't disappear on its own, and it rarely resolves cleanly without one. Email, photos, financial logins, and social accounts are scattered across dozens of services, most of which have no idea whether you're alive or dead. Without a plan, your family inherits a scavenger hunt — often during the worst week of their lives.

You can do a good amount of this yourself, and our checklist is built so you can. What an advocate adds is pattern recognition — we've seen which accounts get missed, which platforms are genuinely difficult, and which decisions tend to matter more in hindsight than people expect at the time. That's hard to know in advance if this is the first time you've done it.

Earlier than feels necessary. The best time is before anything is wrong — while decisions can be made calmly and nothing is urgent. The second-best time is the moment you realize something needs to happen, rather than after weeks of avoiding it. If someone has already died and no plan exists, it's not too late to ask; it's just a different, more forensic kind of work.

Before a death, the work is about clarity and choice — knowing what exists and deciding what should happen to it. During a serious illness or decline, it's often about urgency without panic — getting the essentials in order while there's still time to ask questions. After a death, it's about recovery and closure — finding what's there, securing it, and working through each account methodically so the family isn't doing it alone.

No. We're a consulting practice focused on the technical and practical side of digital succession, not a law firm, and we don't draft wills, trusts, or other legal documents. When a matter involves ownership, inheritance, or anything that needs to hold up legally, we refer clients to qualified attorneys and financial professionals — and because digital assets confuse a lot of otherwise excellent estate attorneys, we can help you find one who's dealt with this before.

That's the most common situation we see, not the exception. It means more reconstruction — working from email trails, saved passwords, statements, and devices to build an inventory that should have existed already. It takes longer and it's harder emotionally, but it's very much still possible.

Yes. Organizations face the same core problem — digital assets, access, and continuity concentrated in too few people — just at a different scale, with billing, vendor contracts, and operational systems added to the mix. See our page for organizations for specifics.

Start with our legacy contact checklist. It walks through setting up the built-in tools most major platforms already offer — no consultation, no cost, no obligation to work with us afterward.