With a Mac computer you can go into passwords and download an Excel sheet with all your logins and passwords. You could print it out too. You can also check compromised passwords and change them.
Again with Apple if you provide a family member with your entry password/code they can open Passwords. They will get stuck on bank access and probably pension access.
Reopening this thread…my wife is trying to understand how her father, who died recently, could possibly have left virtually ALL his vital financial information on his laptop and phone, without leaving details of his passwords and PINs with anybody, or anywhere. He even had a safe, which has been opened up, that contains some useful information, but sadly not passwords etc. He was very guarded about disclosing anything to his family before he died, which was of course his right. However it doesn’t half complicate matters when you go this way, without enabling your loved ones left behind to easily pick up the pieces…
My siblings and I have persuaded my Mum, based directly on the above experience, to give us all her mobile, tablet and online banking PINs etc which she was very happy to do.
Have you tried not looking? I always find stuff when I’m not looking for it.
Without knowing the sort of accounts you’re talking about, I may be wrong, but when I’ve dealt with estates of parents and in-laws, I have never needed access to online accounts: I’ve merely written to the organisations concerned, in the way I did it in the 1990s at work.
That’s not to say, of course, that keeping a record of passwords isn’t a good idea, though I prefer to use a password manager.
And if your FiL couldn’t see that you, @George1 , were the one person he should have entrusted that sort of information to, words fail me.
Stopping the search is a recognised and evidence‑supported technique for finding lost items. Psychology and neuroscience both explain why it works.Why stopping Helps. When you lose something, your brain often goes into a mild stress response. Cortisol and adrenaline impair memory retrieval, especially short‑term and spatial memory. This makes frantic searching counterproductive.Calmness restores access to the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, improving recall .Pausing or stepping away reduces stress and lets the memory surface naturally.Many guides explicitly recommend stop searching and wait as a technique for recovering lost items .This matches your experience: once you stop looking, your brain relaxes, and the memory becomes accessible again — so the item “turns up.” Recognised techniques that use this principle Calming pause — take a moment, breathe, reduce stress; improves memory retrieval.Mindful reset — meditation or brief stillness lowers cortisol and reactivates spatial memory networks.Retracing steps — works best after calming down; context cues reappear.Systematic search — once calm, search methodically rather than frantically.Why it feels like the item “appears”This is not magic — it’s memory mechanics. The memory was encoded but temporarily inaccessible due to stress. Once you stop, the retrieval pathway clears, and you suddenly remember where the item is
Who’d 'ave thort it?
It’s to enable us to prepare his final Luxembourg, and possibly Belgian tax return(s) to the date of his death, without knowing anything about his sources of income and gains, or even what countries he had assets in. Sight of a previous Luxembourg or Belgian filed tax return would have been enormously helpful in signposting what to look for, and therefore who to approach. Deeply frustrating!