Comment Just went through this situation. (Score 1) 812
I just went through this with a friend whose ex-husband did a "death by hibachi" routine. There were 2 young children involved, no death/burial financial issues to resolve. There was no question about it being a suicide, since it is difficult to rent a cargo van and light a BBQ grill inside it after you seal it up. There were questions about whether there were other accounts or information on his computer.
My agreement with her was that I would look through the system and find everything that I could. One condition: Unless it was absolutely necessary I would not share the info with her. I would not share any personal information such as journaling or email, and only if it was legally beneficial or financially necessary would I tell her. She agreed.
As it ended up, all I found were a lot of word docs ranting and raving in a manner consistent to a bi-polar that had stopped taking his meds and started taking a lot of other crap that was non-prescription. None of the info was going to be of any positive result. Of all the crap, a single picture of he and his son taken a few days prior to his death was all that was turned over.
After doing a shred and reformat, I loaded it with XP Pro, since it had Vista on it. After fighting with the non-XP friendly video (Compaq/NVidia), I gave the system back for the kids to use.
Unless you find anything that is of a certain positive result, nothing is worth recovering. If you don't have the relationship and agreement, don't get involved.
My agreement with her was that I would look through the system and find everything that I could. One condition: Unless it was absolutely necessary I would not share the info with her. I would not share any personal information such as journaling or email, and only if it was legally beneficial or financially necessary would I tell her. She agreed.
As it ended up, all I found were a lot of word docs ranting and raving in a manner consistent to a bi-polar that had stopped taking his meds and started taking a lot of other crap that was non-prescription. None of the info was going to be of any positive result. Of all the crap, a single picture of he and his son taken a few days prior to his death was all that was turned over.
After doing a shred and reformat, I loaded it with XP Pro, since it had Vista on it. After fighting with the non-XP friendly video (Compaq/NVidia), I gave the system back for the kids to use.
Unless you find anything that is of a certain positive result, nothing is worth recovering. If you don't have the relationship and agreement, don't get involved.
