The Heirloom journal
Notes on the practice.
Field notes, guides, and the thinking behind Heirloom.
Latest · 7 min read
What Happens to Your Intellectual Property When You Die? The Assets Your Family Inherits but Never Sees
What happens to intellectual property when you die? Your family inherits every copyright and trademark automatically — then loses them in silence. Here's the fix.
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More from the journal
- 02
What Happens If You Die Without a Will? Meet the Estate Plan Your State Already Wrote for You
What happens if you die without a will? The state already wrote one for you — and it disinherits the people you love most. How intestate succession really works.
2026-07-12
6 min read
- 03
Will vs. Trust for Business Owners: Your Will Doesn't Avoid Probate — It Starts It
Will vs trust for business owners: a will doesn't avoid probate — it starts it. What that means for your company, and the one mistake that quietly undoes a trust.
2026-07-11
7 min read
- 04
What Happens to Your Phone Number When You Die — and Why a Stranger Inherits Your Master Key
What happens to your phone number when you die? Carriers can recycle it in as little as 45 days — handing a stranger the texts that unlock your accounts.
2026-07-11
7 min read
- 05
How to Test Your Estate Plan: The 30-Minute Fire Drill Your Death Binder Has Never Survived
Your estate plan has never been tested — and its first user will be grieving. How to test your estate plan with a 30-minute fire drill that finds the gaps now.
2026-07-11
6 min read
- 06
Where to Store Estate Planning Documents So Your Family Actually Finds Them — The Access Paradox
Deciding where to store estate planning documents is harder than writing them. The safe place nobody can open and the easy place nobody protects — how to solve both.
2026-07-10
7 min read
- 07
What Happens to Your Business Taxes When You Die — and the Personal Liability Your Executor Never Sees Coming
What happens to your business taxes when you die? At least two returns come due, and one federal statute can make your executor personally liable. Here's the sequence.
2026-07-10
7 min read
- 08
What Happens to Your Business Debt When You Die — and the Personal Guarantee That Follows You Home
What happens to your business debt when you die? Your family won't inherit the balance directly — but the personal guarantee you forgot signing can quietly eat everything you left them.
2026-07-09
7 min read
- 09
How to Talk to Your Spouse About Your Business Before You Die — The Conversation No Binder Can Replace
How to talk to your spouse about your business before you die: why the illusion of transparency makes founders think they've explained things they never said out loud.
2026-07-09
7 min read
- 10
What Your Family Inherits When a Solo Founder Dies: The Business Nobody Can Read
What your family inherits when a solo founder dies often isn't grief but a question that never closes — the psychology of ambiguous loss, and the map that finally ends it.
2026-07-08
6 min read
- 11
Key Person Insurance for Solo Founders: The Payout That Buys Your Family Time to Sell or Shut Down
Key person insurance for solo founders rarely works the way the brochures describe. Here's the coverage that actually protects your family — and why liquidity, not the policy, is the point.
2026-07-08
7 min read
- 12
How Long Does Probate Take for a Business — and Why Yours Can't Survive the Wait for Legal Authority
How long does probate take for a business? Often months, sometimes over a year — and here's why the legal gap before anyone can act quietly kills a solo founder's company.
2026-07-08
6 min read
- 13
What Happens to Your Business Bank Account When You Die — and the Sole Signatory Problem
What happens to a business bank account when the owner dies? If you're the only signatory, the bank freezes it — and payroll, vendors, and refunds stall for months.
2026-07-07
6 min read
- 14
What Is Your Bus Factor? The Solo Founder Metric That Turns "Hit by a Bus" Into a Plan
Your bus factor is the number of people who'd have to vanish before your business stalls. For most solo founders it's one. Here's how to raise it — without hiring a soul.
2026-07-06
6 min read
- 15
What Happens to Your Customers' Data When You Die — and Why You're Still the Legal Custodian
What happens to customer data when the business owner dies? For a solo founder, personal data outlives you — and the duty to protect it doesn't. Here's the gap no one plans for.
2026-07-06
6 min read
- 16
How to Set Up a Legacy Contact on Apple, Google, and Facebook — and Where the Built-In Death Switches Stop
How to set up a legacy contact on Apple, Google, and Facebook — what each built-in death switch actually hands your family, and where all three of them stop.
2026-07-05
7 min read
- 17
Swedish Death Cleaning for Your Digital Life: Why Deleting Old Accounts Is Estate Planning Too
Swedish death cleaning for your digital life treats deletion as estate planning: every account you close now is one your grieving family never has to decode later.
2026-07-04
7 min read
- 18
How Often Should You Update Your Estate Plan? Why a Death Binder Goes Stale Faster Than You Think
How often should you update your estate plan? For solo founders, a death binder starts decaying the day you finish it. Here's what actually triggers a review.
2026-07-04
6 min read
- 19
What Happens to Your Password Manager When You Die — Why Perfect Security Becomes a Perfect Lockout
What happens to your password manager when you die? Zero-knowledge encryption means no one can reset it — here's how emergency access actually works.
2026-07-03
7 min read
- 20
What Happens to Your Crypto When You Die? Why Self-Custody Has No Bereavement Desk
What happens to your crypto when you die? Nothing — and that's the problem. Why self-custody has no recovery path, and how to leave a map without leaking your keys.
2026-07-03
7 min read
- 21
What Happens to Your Business If You're Incapacitated? The Planning Gap Every Solo Founder Skips
What happens to your business if you're incapacitated? Why your will is useless while you're alive — and the durable power of attorney solo founders skip.
2026-07-02
7 min read
- 22
What Happens to Your GitHub Account When You Die — and Why the Code Is the Easy Part
What happens to your GitHub account when you die: heirs can get a copy of the repos, but not the deploy keys, secrets, or env vars that make the code actually run.
2026-06-27
7 min read
- 23
What Happens to Your Email Account When You Die — and Why It's the Master Key to Your Entire Business
What happens to your email account when you die determines whether your family inherits your business or gets locked out of all of it. Here's the mechanism nobody plans for.
2026-06-27
7 min read
- 24
What Happens to Your Apple Developer Account When You Die — and Why Your Apps Quietly Vanish From the Store
What happens to your Apple Developer account when you die: individual enrollments are non-transferable, renewals lapse, and your apps get pulled. Here's how to keep them alive.
2026-06-27
7 min read
- 25
What Happens to Your Stripe Account When You Die — and Why the Money Keeps Coming But Nobody Can Touch It
What happens to your Stripe account when you die: payments keep settling, but funds route to a frozen bank account and KYC can't be re-verified. Here's the trap.
2026-06-26
7 min read
- 26
Do Beneficiary Designations Override a Will? What Solo Founders Get Wrong About Who Inherits the Money
Beneficiary designations override a will more often than founders realize. Here's how payable-on-death forms, probate, and a forgotten ex can decide who really gets your business money.
2026-06-26
7 min read
- 27
What Happens to a Single-Member LLC When the Owner Dies — and Why Your Family May Not Inherit It
What happens to a single-member LLC when the owner dies depends on one document most solo founders never write. Here's how membership interest passes — or quietly dissolves.
2026-06-24
7 min read
- 28
How to Make Your Solo SaaS Sellable After You Die — So Your Family Inherits Money, Not a Mystery
Making your online business sellable after death is the difference between leaving your family an asset and leaving them a mystery. Here's the diligence packet that turns a solo SaaS into inheritable money.
2026-06-24
7 min read
- 29
What Happens to Your Paying Customers If You Die — and the Sunset Plan That Protects Them
What happens to paying customers when a founder dies? The card keeps charging, support goes silent. Here's the sunset plan that closes the loop honestly.
2026-06-23
6 min read
- 30
Letter of Instruction for Solo Founders: Why You're Writing for Someone in Shock
A letter of instruction for solo founders fails when it's written for a calm reader. Here's how grief changes the brain — and how to write a handoff someone in shock can actually follow.
2026-06-22
7 min read
- 31
How to Choose a Digital Executor for Your Startup (Without Picking the Wrong Person)
How to choose a digital executor for your startup: why the person you trust most is often the wrong one for the job, and how to split the role so the handoff actually works.
2026-06-22
7 min read
- 32
What Happens to Your Two-Factor Authentication When You Die — and Why Passwords Aren't Enough
What happens to two-factor authentication when you die? Your passwords may survive, but the codes locking everyone out live on a phone no one can unlock. Here's the gap.
2026-06-21
7 min read
- 33
Dead Man's Switch: How Anyone Even Knows to Step In When a Solo Founder Dies
A dead man's switch for digital accounts solves the problem no one plans for: not access, but the trigger. How will anyone know you're gone before the servers quietly bill themselves into the ground?
2026-06-21
7 min read
- 34
What Happens to Your Domains and Subscriptions When You Die: The Decay Window Every Solo Founder Misses
What happens to your domain name when you die? Auto-renewals fail, accounts freeze, and data deletes on a clock. Here's the decay window solo founders miss — and how to beat it.
2026-06-19
7 min read
- 35
How to Organize Important Documents in Case of Death — Without Burdening the People You Love
Learning how to organize important documents in case of death is really about grief: the person who untangles your affairs will do it when their brain is least able to.
2026-06-18
6 min read
- 36
Why We Avoid Estate Planning: The Psychology Behind the Folder You Never Open
Why we avoid estate planning isn't laziness — it's death anxiety and the ostrich effect. Here's the behavioral science, plus the one if-then trick that finally gets it done.
2026-06-16
6 min read
- 37
Business Continuity Plan for Solo Founders: Capturing the Knowledge That Lives Only in Your Head
A business continuity plan for solo founders starts with the tacit knowledge no one else can see. Here's how to get what's in your head onto paper before it's needed.
2026-06-16
7 min read
- 38
What Happens to Your Business If You Die? A Solo Founder's Continuity Plan
What happens to your business if you die suddenly? For solo founders, the real risk isn't money — it's the knowledge no one wrote down. Here's how to build a handoff.
2026-06-15
6 min read
- 39
What Happens to Your Online Accounts When You Die — and Why Your Executor Can't Just Log In
What happens to your online accounts when you die isn't a password problem — it's a legal one. How RUFADAA, 2FA, and terms of service can lock out the people you trust.
2026-06-14
7 min read
- 40
Digital Estate Planning for Solo Founders: Why Your Will Won't Unlock the Business
A digital estate plan for solo founders bridges the gap a will can't: heirs may legally own your company yet be locked out of every account. Here's how to fix it.
2026-06-13
7 min read