At the beginning of how blockchain will manage your end
By: Alan Goodman
Tags: Smart Contracts, Blockchain

Listen, we’re all going to die. You have any idea what kind of mess that’s going to leave behind?

So far, not in my experience. My mother recently passed, and while it was easy to tease her about being a bit of a loon when it came to planning and preparing, she gave us all a huge gift by organizing and prepaying her entire end of life arrangements. I made one call to the funeral home and everything else was arranged, even though she was living many states away from where she lived when she signed the contract — 25 years ago!

Fortunately I’m a devoted digitizer, because even though I was an ocean away from her I had all the information at my fingertips. Along with the funeral plans was a file dozens and dozens of pages thick with everything I’d need to know about tying up her affairs. From her investment accounts, to her organ donor wishes, to the tax bill information, to the trash removal days and procedure for properly stickering the bags I’d leave for collection, it was all catalogued and complete.

Almost all of that was moot because when she went into assisted living six years ago, we sold her house, simplified her financial affairs, and eliminated most of the other complexities. But it made me realize — even though I don’t get automated water softener salt deliveries that need to be ended, what about all the loose threads I haven’t balled up? How do I make all my wishes known and know they’ll be executed?

Blockchain, baby. You know I’m thinking of you, right?

First of all if we were at the stage of Electronic Health Records, no matter where in the world I take ill or need assistance, my whole medical history database will be available with my personal private key. (This actually became an issue recently when my son, eager to shadow a hospital doctor in advance of enrolling in courses he’ll need for his new interest in medicine, had to assemble records of his immunizations. We couldn’t easily recall the doctor he was seeing at the time they were administered).

If I don’t survive whatever emergency I face, there could be an almost instantaneous release of information to whatever organ donor center I had designated. Imagine how much more viable my innards might be and how much more rapidly they could be used to save another life.

Probate? Who needs it?

If I still own a house or other real property, ownership can be transferred digitally, saving my heirs the pain, delay, and annoyance of probate and the need to prove their identity.

I assume we’ll still need medical professionals to certify the death, but with that individual’s secure and secret code inserted, my will — which I might have created with simple forms available on the blockchain and designed to self-execute — could divide my property, cancel my Adobe auto-pay subscription, cut off the cell phone, the auto insurance, and the Mastercard bill, and send information to a loved one about the Vimeo account where our hundreds and hundreds of kiddie videos I shot, edited, and uploaded are lodged, along with the password and the information about the annual renewal fee.

Paying through the block instead of through the nose

If we were in a situation where we needed help in paying for my funeral, donations could be received digitally from loved ones eager to help, with no middlemen to meddle or profit. Or, if I were flush, my account could pay their airfare and lodging to help them send me off, just by inserting their information to the blockchain. (Needless to say, they would all have been informed at the moment my living will contract was put into effect — automatically).

And there’d be no reason to worry that my descendants are not as organized as I am about record keeping. Wills and financial records go missing. But not when they are in the blockchain.

Right now, a host of entrepreneurs are working on projects in this field. It is welcome. Most people put off making wills because they are hard, expensive, and emotionally draining. Blockchain forms could put the entire process of distributing your estate in your own hands, in addition to automating the processing of terminating and forwarding accounts.

Blockchain could even send the “newspaper” of my choice updated paragraphs about my demise that anyone remembering me could read, without my family having to worry about creating that document.

Did I mention my mother wrote her own obit, with details on where to submit it? Twenty-five years ago?? Even the funeral home guy told me, “She was one of a kind.”

As if I needed him to tell me that!

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