Guides

Guides for the things families have to work out

How to organise what matters, written for people doing it for the first time.

Free to read, free to share. No account needed for any of them.

Digital legacy (6)Emergency planning (1)Family preparedness (6)Getting started (4)Inheritance planning (10)Security (6)Unclaimed money (3)

If someone has died

The claims Indian families face first, in the order institutions usually ask for them.

Inheritance planning

How to Claim a Bank Account After a Death in India: Full Process

The documents each bank asks for, what changes when a nomination exists, what happens for a joint account, and how long a transmission claim realistically takes.

Inheritance planning

Succession Certificate in India: When You Need One and How to Get It

Which court to approach, what it costs, how long it realistically takes, and when a legal heir certificate or a nomination would have been enough instead.

Family preparedness

How to Claim EPF After a Death in India: Forms 20, 10D and 5IF

Which EPFO form applies to which benefit, who is entitled to file each one, how a nomination changes the route, and what happens when no nomination exists.

Inheritance planning

Mutual Fund and Demat Transmission in India: How Units Move

How units and shares pass to a nominee or legal heir, what each registrar and depository asks for, and the thresholds that decide whether you need extra documents.

Inheritance planning

How to Make a Life Insurance Claim in India Without Delay

The documents an insurer needs, the IRDAI timelines they must work within, the reasons claims get queried, and what to do when an insurer asks for more.

Family preparedness

The First 48 Hours: What a Family Actually Needs to Find

The short list that matters in the first two days, what can safely wait a week, and the documents to order several certified copies of before anything else.

Getting your own affairs in order

The work that takes an evening now and saves a family months later.

Family preparedness

How to Change a Nominee on a Bank Account in India, Step by Step

The form each bank uses, what to carry to the branch, how to do it in net banking where that is offered, and why a nomination is not the same as a will.

Inheritance planning

How to Write a Will in India: Validity, Witnesses and Registration

What makes a will valid in India, whether registration is required, how many witnesses you need and who they must not be, and the mistakes that cause disputes later.

Family preparedness

Nominee vs Legal Heir in India: The Difference That Causes Disputes

A nominee receives; a legal heir owns. Where that distinction bites for banks, demat and mutual funds, the one insurance exception, and how to avoid a family dispute.

Inheritance planning

Property Inheritance in India: How Title Actually Transfers

Mutation, succession certificate and probate, and which one you actually need. The order to do them in, what each costs, and where families most often get stuck.

Getting started

What to Put in a Digital Vault First: The Ten Records That Matter

The ten records that cover most of what a family cannot reconstruct. Salary account, fixed deposits, term policy, demat, PF, locker, crypto, PAN, loans and who to call.

Family preparedness

Why a Will Does Not Cover Your Digital Life, and What Does

A will decides who inherits. It does not say what exists, where it is, or how to reach it, and probate makes it a public document. What fills that gap instead.

Why Strong Security Makes Inheritance Hard, and How to Solve It

The design that keeps an attacker out keeps your heirs out too. Why that tension is real, and how splitting a secret across people resolves it without weakening anything.

For NRIs and cross-border families

What changes when the assets are in one country and the heirs are in another.

Inheritance planning

NRI Inheritance in India: Repatriation, FEMA and the Documents

Repatriation limits, FEMA rules and tax treatment, plus the documents an Indian bank, registrar or insurer will ask an NRI or their nominee abroad to produce.

Who Owns Your Data After You Die: Terms, Law and the Gap Between

Terms of service say one thing, succession law says another, and the gap is where families get stuck. What DPDP changes in India, and what it still does not.

Family preparedness

The Global Estate Planning Gap: What the Surveys Actually Show

84.8% of Indians have no will, and the comparable figures elsewhere are not much better. What the surveys measure, what they miss, and what they have in common.

Digital accounts and crypto

The category families lose most completely, because there is no institution to write to.

What Happens to Your Accounts When You Die: The Real Policies

Apple, Google, Meta, Indian banks and crypto exchanges each have a written policy. What every one of them actually does, side by side, and what a family must supply.

How to Leave Cryptocurrency Your Family Can Actually Recover

Three routes for crypto inheritance: seed phrases, hardware wallets and exchange accounts. What fails in each, and how to split a secret without handing it over.

A Password Manager's Emergency Access Is Not an Inheritance Plan

Emergency access opens a vault after a delay. It never explains what matters, never reaches what the vault does not hold, and was never built for a grieving family.

Keeping Family Photos From Dying With a Locked Account

Family photos live inside accounts nobody else can open. What each cloud service allows, how to export properly, and where to keep a copy that outlives a login.

When the Only Keyholder Dies: The QuadrigaCX Custody Lesson

A founder died holding the only keys and C$190 million froze. What the regulator later found, and why the real lesson is about custody design, not about crypto.

What to Do With Digital Accounts After a Death, Platform by Platform

Memorialise, close or transfer. What Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft and the major Indian services each allow a family to do, and the proof each one demands.

What Researchers Know About Your Digital Afterlife So Far

The academic work on posthumous data: how much of it exists, who ends up managing it, and what the findings suggest about planning while you still can.

Money that goes unclaimed

Tens of thousands of crores sit with Indian banks and insurers, almost never because of fraud.

Unclaimed money

Unclaimed Money in India: Where It Goes and Who Holds It Now

₹86,917 crore with the RBI and ₹20,062 crore with insurers. The four separate bodies holding unclaimed money in India, and the official portal for each one.

Unclaimed money

The Life Insurance Money Indian Families Never Claim

₹20,062 crore sat unclaimed with life insurers at the end of FY24. Why policies go unclaimed, how to search each insurer's own register, and what a claim needs.

Unclaimed money

Unclaimed Money Around the World: Where It Piles Up, and Why

Roughly $162 billion across twelve countries, and the structural reasons it accumulates. Which systems return money well, which forfeit it, and what that means.

Using LifeWyn

How the product itself works, written the same way as everything else here.

Getting started

How to Set Up Your Digital Vault: The First Hour, Step by Step

Your first hour in LifeWyn. Setting a passphrase, saving recovery shares before anything else, and the ten records that close most of the gap for a family.

How to Recover Access to Your Vault When You Are Locked Out

The real routes back in: a recovery phrase, trusted contacts holding shares, and device re-enrolment. Also the honest limit, which is losing both at once.

How Your Master Key Works: Zero-Knowledge Explained Without Jargon

What your master key actually is, why it never reaches our servers, what we can and cannot see because of that, and what it means when we say we cannot help.

Inheritance planning

How to Create Inheritance Rules: Who Gets What, and Exactly When

Assigning each record to a person and a backup, setting the waiting period, and choosing what evidence has to arrive before anything opens for anyone.

Emergency planning

Emergency Access: What Unlocks, When, and What Stays Sealed

The disclosure scope for a medical emergency against a verified death. What opens at each stage, what never opens, and how an emergency view closes again.

Inheritance planning

How Your Nominees Claim: The Whole Sequence, Stage by Stage

What a nominee is told, what they have to prove, how the portal works without an account, and roughly how long each stage takes from first notice to final claim.

Getting started

How to Set Up Life Signals: Check-Ins, Windows and Escalation

Choosing a check-in rhythm that fits your life, setting each escalation window, and deciding who is asked to confirm and when, so a holiday never looks like a death.

Inheritance planning

How to Give a CA, Lawyer or Adviser Scoped Access to Your Vault

Letting a professional see only the records that concern them, with an expiry date, a full log of what they opened, and the ability to revoke access at any moment.

Getting started

Why a Good Inactivity Check-In Is Deliberately Slow, Not Fast

A fast trigger is a dangerous trigger. The windows that stop a holiday or a hospital stay looking like a death, and why every gate here fails closed rather than open.

How to Choose Trusted Contacts for Recovery Without Risk

How to pick the people who can help you back into your own account, why more than one matters, and exactly what each of them can and cannot see along the way.

Questions about these guides

Do I need a LifeWyn account to read these guides?

No. Every guide here is free to read and free to share, with no account, no email and no paywall. Print them, send them to a parent who will not use an app, or forward one to a family group. Content that is handed over without conditions is the only kind worth linking to.

Are these guides accurate and up to date?

Every figure, fee and time limit is checked against an official source — the RBI, SEBI, EPFO, IRDAI or a government notification — and each guide lists those sources with the date they were checked. Each also carries a published date and a reviewed date at the top. Procedures change, so if you are acting on something time-sensitive, confirm the current position with the institution involved.

Where should I start if someone has just died?

Start with what a family actually needs in the first few days, then the specific claim you are facing. For a bank account, read the guide on claiming a bank account after a death in India. For provident fund and pension, read the EPF guide. If an institution has asked for a succession certificate, read that guide before going anywhere near a court.

Is this a complete guide to digital legacy?

Taken together these guides cover the practical ground: what to record, who should be able to reach it, how Indian institutions actually release money after a death, and what happens to online accounts and crypto. They do not replace a will, and they are not legal, tax or financial advice. Where a matter turns on the law or on your own circumstances, speak to a qualified professional in the relevant country.

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