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Business owner (Score:5, Informative)
My spouse wouldn't know what to do with source code, but I want her to be entitled to the royalties from my software products. This is not an insignificant amount of money. I discussed the challenge at length with the company lawyer, who also happens to be a good friend, and we were able to write up specific clauses in my Will that arrange for a neutral third party software support/development company to be engaged to value the asset - and then continue development/support with appropriate royalties going to my spouse. For the remaining useful life of those software products (which could be as much as 20 years these days), she will reap up to 10% of the annual turnover generated by my products.
As part of the exercise, I had to prepare fairly detailed documentation of the software products - which turned out to be an excellent thing to do anyway. All in all, a very productive (and reassuring) exercise.
Re:Who can guess? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Legal stuff is open, everything else encrypted. (Score:5, Informative)
I've made sure that all the legally-important data on me is available to my will's executioner (i.e. the person handling my estate trust).
I believe the term you're looking for is executor, not executioner. Unless you already have that in place, too.
Data Will (of course) Remain on My PC (Score:4, Informative)
I prepared a document that lists where important papers -- hardcopy or electronic -- can be found. I printed it and give a copy to my wife and each of my two children. Another copy is in our safe deposit box at our bank.
Files containing sensitive data (e.g., credit card numbers, tax returns) are encrypted. I documented how to decrypt those files; the document contains all my important passwords. The online document itself is encrypted; it's strictly for my own use in case I need to update it. A plain-text printout of the document is sealed in an envelope in the safe deposit box. Note that all "important" passwords are in an encrypted file on my PC. Passwords for accessing Web sites are also in an encrypted file that my browser can decrypt if I give it the proper pass-phrase. The pass-phrase exists only in my head and in the document described in this paragraph.
Also in the safe deposit box is a printout of the ASCII-armored form of my OpenPGP keys (public and private) and a floppy containing those keys. We recently changed safe deposit boxes; the new one is wider but shallower than the old one. I think it is wide enough to hold a CD. If so, I will write those keys to a CD and put it in the box.
Re:Let them try. (Score:5, Informative)
I have all the good stuff on a TrueCrypt volume, so it dies with me. I have concerns about the various accounts I have with money in them, but I assume that if there is money involved, someone will figure it out.
If people don't know about the money accounts, there's a chance that it will revert to the state as an "abandoned account." If you don't interact with your financial institution every N number of months, the state considers the account abandoned and takes the money. The "N" varies state-by-state (and in California is surprisingly short amount of time).
Once the state takes the account, you can still get it back -- but the state won't pay you interest on the abandoned property.