[prpon]

A cousin passed away few years back with cancer. It wasn't sudden but wasn't expected either. (He was 37 and responding well to treatment). His wife was completely uninterested with regards to finances and bills.

He was quite meticulous and wrote down every single account he owned, details like account number, login, password in an excel spreadsheet. It was a lot of help for her.

I worry about security of such a system. I also worry about security of online services for using such a system. I also worry if my wife would be able to locate that file.

Are there any schemes that work for you?

[quanticle]

Well, the best thing would be to write up all that, print it out, and put it in the same safe-deposit box that holds your will. Of all the storage media we have, paper is still the best proven for long-term retrieval.

[JoeAltmaier]

Never, never put your will into a safe-deposit box. That cannot be opened after you die until you have an executor. Which happens after the will is found.

Just make a couple copies, leave on in your desk, in your office, in your bedside table, with your lawyer. They are not secret documents, not something you have to lock up.

[StavrosK]

I would encrypt it, store the passphrase somewhere (or tell it to your wife) and put (a link to) the file up on DMS. This way, you have nothing to lose.

[jtheory]

A dead man's switch is interesting to me, because it is one way to (try to) work around the what-if's that can foil the best laid plans of the unimaginative deceased.

Any solution where the sensitive information is physically near me doesn't work well -- what if I die when my house burns down, and my computer and paper documents are destroyed? What if I carefully document everything, store the document encrypted offsite, and make sure my wife knows the password.. and we die together in a car crash?

There needs to be a solution that lives somewhere I don't, and doesn't rely on people I normally accompany on airplanes, in cars, in dark alleyways...

One "what-if" that is super-important to an email-based dead man's switch -- how are your email servers set up for getting email through? I.e, DKIM, RDNS... all of the tricks & protocols that Google uses (and if you don't, you'll end up in the Hotmail junk folder more often than not), processing of auto-replies like Earthlink's whitelist system, etc..