I have relatively technically incompetent family members, but my will instructs them to talk to any of 3 different technically competent friends that I trust (ideally more than 1 of them, all together in person with my estate providing funds for it) to guide them through shit like crypto private keys, password managers and encrypted archives that I could never imagine my very normal sister or mother dealing with. I check in with my friends every year to make sure that they're OK with the arrangement still, and the reason it's 3 is in case I'm involved in some kind of accident with 1 or more of them.

If by some freak accident all 4 of us die at once (at a bachelor party or something), I trust my heirs' competency to find someone who can guide them through it. I specify more than 1 because while I trust all the technical advisers, shit like gambling addiction can happen that I don't know about.

In return, I'm written in to help with similar circumstances for them.

The hard part is setting this up, but now it's just an annual email.

Indeed, it’s an interesting topic and always makes me a bit uneasy to think about it. Especially as a technical person where there’s credentials, keys, wallets all over the place.

I wish more companies would think about that and solve this in some way. 1Password could for example print out some instructions and have a support number to call listed directly there for someone who finds this document.