Your will won’t save your family if your passwords die with you

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Indians are obsessed with wills, nominations, property papers, and every other traditional aspect of succession. What they don’t see coming is the far bigger threat sitting right in their pocket: their passwords.

The biggest point of failure in inheritance is no longer the law. It’s digital. Here is the reality: You can’t claim what you can’t find.

And you can’t find what you can’t open. Across Indian households, there is typically one person who handles everything—investments, bills, demat account, UPI apps, bank logins, email, even the OTP-linked phone. The rest of the family operates on trust.

That confidence is misplaced. Here is the uncomfortable truth. If that key family member dies without sharing the digital access trail, the family is stuck.

Not for a day or two. For months. Sometimes for years.

Here is a situation seen often: A person has a demat account, a couple of mutual funds, a PPF, some FDs, a few savings accounts, an EPF passbook, a credit card, and a few small insurance policies. They manage all of this through a single Gmail account linked to one phone number. No one else has the phone password.

No one else knows the email login. The bank login is saved only in the browser of that personal laptop. And the laptop itself has a password.

When this person passes away, the family is locked out of every single gate. They don’t know which bank is active. They don’t know where the investments are.

They don’t know if any SIPs exist. They don’t know where the insurance policy copies are. They don’t even know how many accounts they’re supposed to chase.