Most people’s lives are now behind passwords: bank accounts, photos, email, subscriptions that keep billing. When someone dies, their family often can’t get in, and companies’ own processes take months, if they exist at all.
The usual answers, and their problems
- Writing passwords down in a will or a drawer: they go out of date, and anyone who finds them has everything, today.
- Sharing your master password: the same problem, and it breaks most services’ terms.
- Each company’s own process: slow, different for every service, and some have none.
A better way: legacy contacts
A legacy contact is someone you name to inherit specific vaults. Nothing is shared now. If they ask for access, you’re told and have a waiting period, from a week to three months, to say no. If you can’t answer, they get exactly the vaults you chose, to view, and nothing else.
Vallkey has legacy contacts on every plan, the free one included, and checks in with you if you stop using it for months.
What to leave
- A vault of what matters: bank and pension accounts, email (which resets everything else), photos, and subscriptions to cancel.
- Final instructions: what to do with each account: close it, keep it, download photos first.
- Where things are: documents, keys, the will.
Talk to them
Tell your legacy contacts that you’ve named them, and that they’ll need a Vallkey account. A Free one is enough.
Last updated October 3, 2026