Heavy Topic - Helping a Family With an Untimely Death

[BryanOttawaDetroit]

Hi everyone,

 

I have attempted to make some merch messages in the past and was unsuccessful, so I thought I would give this a try.  I have a close friend who a few years ago suffered a traumatic brain injury, and since then had his personality change drastically. He ended up severing all his relationships, suffering incarceration, and ultimately recently lost his life.

 

As the tech and photo guy in the group, I was tasked with handling the photo slideshow, and AV duties at the funeral, which actually went amazingly well. (thank-you MS ClipChamp ) But now I have been given a much more sensitive task, I was given not only the deceased digital devices (a MacBook, iPad, 3x iPhones, Apple watch) but I also took the old desktop that the family had that I built for him probably over 12 years ago.

 

I have extracted all the personal photos and videos that the family will want to keep, trying to separate out any sensitive media that may have been taken in the later years, but I have a couple of questions.  

1) How can we do our best to ensure that all accounts that he may have had money in are able to be accessed once his devices are wiped and phone number cancelled.

2) What is the best means of presenting an organized collection of photos to a non-techie person that they can access after I am finished organizing it?

[manikyath]

5 minutes ago, BryanOttawaDetroit said:

1) How can we do our best to ensure that all accounts that he may have had money in are able to be accessed once his devices are wiped and phone number cancelled.

the bank should be able to help you with this. in theory any money that belonged to the deceased goes into the inheritance, and gets handled from that end. as far as i'm aware over here at least banks freeze the respective accounts until the inheritance has been settled to make sure none of the family members run off with money that isnt rightfully theirs (yet). but really.. this is not a matter for a tech forum, because the problem at hand is far from technical.

 

6 minutes ago, BryanOttawaDetroit said:

2) What is the best means of presenting an organized collection of photos to a non-techie person that they can access after I am finished organizing it?

a USB drive organized in folders, and the same thing burned to DVD's as backup for when they inevitably wreck said drive.

[Echothedolpin]

You need an estate lawyer, they have resources to handle this kind of thing completely above board.

[Bitter]

For the first half, lawyer probably, but that's really up to the next of kin inheriting the accounts. Do not access the accounts yourself or move any money around.

As for the other, DVD's as mentioned but maybe some physical ones. USB is a good idea yes but you need a file system that'll work with everything into the future and won't suffer bit rot. Cloud storage may also be a good idea.

[LogicalDrm]

For question 1, this depends bit on where you live. In general, you dp business directly with banks, insurance companies etc. If you aren't family, you need to have written approval of all family members that are counted as close relatives (parents or other legal guardians, siblings, children). Local legislation states who is "in charge" of the process and up until what point. For example banks will transfer ownership or control of accounts to person/group who has legal rights to handle it. If it's group, any subsequent actions will require approval from all members of said group (we have this going on for my grandma's estate).

 

For two, physical media is easiest, but if any of them already has cloud service, use that. Easy to access, hard to mess up permanently.

[Zodiark1593]

23 hours ago, BryanOttawaDetroit said:

Hi everyone,

 

I have attempted to make some merch messages in the past and was unsuccessful, so I thought I would give this a try.  I have a close friend who a few years ago suffered a traumatic brain injury, and since then had his personality change drastically. He ended up severing all his relationships, suffering incarceration, and ultimately recently lost his life.

 

As the tech and photo guy in the group, I was tasked with handling the photo slideshow, and AV duties at the funeral, which actually went amazingly well. (thank-you MS ClipChamp ) But now I have been given a much more sensitive task, I was given not only the deceased digital devices (a MacBook, iPad, 3x iPhones, Apple watch) but I also took the old desktop that the family had that I built for him probably over 12 years ago.

 

I have extracted all the personal photos and videos that the family will want to keep, trying to separate out any sensitive media that may have been taken in the later years, but I have a couple of questions.  

1) How can we do our best to ensure that all accounts that he may have had money in are able to be accessed once his devices are wiped and phone number cancelled.

2) What is the best means of presenting an organized collection of photos to a non-techie person that they can access after I am finished organizing it?

For the 1st, definitely lawyer territory. Companies tend to have certain policies for dealing with deceased customer information, and a lawyer will be better able to have all the information and approvals at hand necessary to send off requests. 
 

For the second, USB drive or cloud storage is the way to go. With cloud storage however, you’ll need to ensure they actually download the contents. 

[Bitter]

You might consider some archival quality physical media or actual physical prints of some of the photos, maybe the ones from the funeral services.

[LogicalDrm]

16 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

For the 1st, definitely lawyer territory. Companies tend to have certain policies for dealing with deceased customer information, and a lawyer will be better able to have all the information and approvals at hand necessary to send off requests. 

This depends highly on country and legislation. US or similar, sure. But in Finland for example, it's just paperwork and there are templates and guides for it. Ofc if you haven't ever done any such official paperwork, then using professional is option. But there also here banks offer such service besides law firms.