Navigating the Logistics of Death Ahead of Time

Abby Schneiderman, then a 32-year-old mother and entrepreneur, was getting ready to celebrate her daughter’s first birthday when she received the news: Her older brother had been killed in a head-on collision while driving through East Hampton, N.Y., with his family.

Suddenly, her fledgling business — Everplans, a website that helps people create detailed end-of-life plans — took on greater meaning. “In the middle of building this site to help all of these hypothetical people that might die someday, my family experienced a tragedy,” she said. “My brother was 51 and had all of the resources to have a plan in place. But my family was still left with a huge amount of logistics and complicated decisions that we had to make.”

Just as she was building the tool to help people navigate through the mental fog that follows such a devastating loss, she and her family were experiencing it. “It turned what had been a project into a mission,” said Ms. Schneiderman, now 33. “And we wanted to make sure that nobody was left in the same situation my family was in, which was without a plan.” . .

The number of end-of-life planning and document storage sites is on the rise, like AfterSteps.com and Principled Heart, and many of those, too, have sprung from personal loss or out of necessity. Other websites deal with a specific piece of planning, such as online memorials, sending emails from the grave (morbid, I know) or what should happen to your Facebook account. And some estate planning lawyers are said to be working on storage sites of their own.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/29/your-money/navigating-the-logistics-of-death-ahead-of-time.html?ref=business

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I'm doing my own, not fancy or formal, but having lost my father (with a Will) almost 2 years ago, and my husband (without a Will) last May, I think I know enough to cover most of the necessary bases, and want to do it for my family and friends.