The text code needs a plan

Say you do everything right.

You sit down one weekend and write out the passwords for the bank, the email, the phone bill, the photo account and the account with your tax returns. You seal the list of every password in an envelope and put it in the safe next to your will. You tell the one person you'd trust with it where the safe is. You feel better about it than you have in years.

Then the day comes. They open the envelope, type in the password for your email, and the screen asks for a six-digit code. It says the code was just sent to your phone. That phone was shut off two weeks ago, because somebody had to call the carrier and stop the bill.

So they call the phone company to turn the line back on, and the phone company wants to know who they are. They call the email provider, and the email provider has a form. The form takes weeks to process, and can be denied. They are also filling it out in the same month they're dealing with your death.

Having every password didn't get them in.

The second step depends on your phone, a key or a list of codes

That extra step on your accounts stops a scammer who gets hold of your password from walking in with it. I wouldn't tell anyone to turn it off. But that second step depends on one of these:

• A phone number, which stops when the bill stops.
• An app on one particular phone. That phone is locked, and sooner or later it gets wiped or traded in.
• A small plastic key in a drawer, which nobody else knows is a key.
• A list of backup codes you were told to print out. Most people screenshot them instead, and the screenshot lands in the photo account that needs the codes.

That last one trips people up, because the screenshot feels like you saved the codes.

Where Apple's and Google's tools fall short

Apple and Google both built a setting that lets you pick who gets your data. Both are free, both take about five minutes, and both only work if you set them up while you're here. Do them.

Apple calls it a Legacy Contact. You name a person, Apple hands you an access key to pass along, and when the time comes that person brings the key and a death certificate to Apple and gets read access to your photos, your mail, your notes, your files, your device backups.

It doesn't cover iCloud Keychain, and the Keychain is where your passwords and your passkeys are kept. Purchased movies and books don't transfer either, but it is the Apple Keychain, where the passwords live, that stops a plan.

Google calls it the Inactive Account Manager. You pick how long the account has to sit unused before it counts as inactive: three months, six, twelve, or eighteen. You list up to ten people and choose which of your data each one gets. It works, but it starts only after the account has gone unused for the time you picked. Your death alone does not start it. Pick eighteen months and eighteen months is how long your family waits.

What to do about it this month

These seven steps take an hour or two and a list.

1. Start with the email account. Nearly every other account resets through it.
2. Write down the second step as well as the password. For each account you want them to get into, write down which phone gets the code, which app makes it and where the key is. The code lands on a locked phone, so write down the passcode that unlocks that phone too.
3. Print the backup codes. Keep the printed codes with the rest of your plan and your will. A screenshot sitting inside the account is not a backup.
4. Keep the phone line on. The codes go to whichever phone carries your number, so somebody keeps paying that bill until the person you picked is into every account and has moved the codes to a phone they hold.
5. Write down the PIN for your account with the phone company and whose name the account is in. That PIN is the number you give the phone company when you call, so it goes on the same sheet as the passwords. If the account has no PIN yet, only the account owner can set one.
6. Set the Legacy Contact and the Inactive Account Manager. Each takes about five minutes and costs nothing. Once they're set up, the people you named use the access you arranged instead of filling out a support form.
7. Tell the person. Say the name out loud, tell them the plan exists, and tell them where it is. If they don't know the plan exists, they won't know to look for it.

Then put a reminder in your calendar for a year out, because you'll change phones, and the second step moves with the phone.

So the person you picked can get in

You do these steps so the person you picked can get in during the worst week of their life, find what you wanted them to find and take care of it without sitting on hold explaining to a stranger that you passed away.