You may set your beneficiary for almost all of your bank accounts and financial accounts. You just have to notify them of your beneficiary. EDIT: This may only be for retirement accounts?
I use Simple for banking, which doesn't support this, but Betterment (who manages my retirement accounts) does. My wife is my primary beneficiary, and I've submitted a feature request to them that they support specifying a 501(c)(3) as my contingent beneficiary (Watsi, in case you're wondering) if we've both died at the same time.
I'm curious what their UX around it is; I should ask! Ideally, my wife would provide them proof of my death, and then they would say "Here are your options, and the consequences of each."
The SSA has a death index. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Death_Index Banks probably register your SS number (which they are required to have) with the SSA for "notify if dead" (just a guess). Doubtful they give every financial institution the SS numbers of all deaths on a regular basis. Then again they might have direct access to such information since they can't open up an account for a dead person.
Of course it suck if you end up on it while you are still alive
>She learned that she was dead when she received a letter from her bank. The bank expressed its corporate condolences, and locked her out of her account. The Social Security Administration also stopped her retirement checks, and her health insurance also stopped.
