How do I make sure my partner can access things if I am not there?

Households manage this badly in two opposite directions. Some share everything — passwords on a note in a drawer — which breaches banking terms, voids fraud protection and is genuinely dangerous. Others share nothing, so that a single illness leaves one person unable to pay a bill or find a policy. The legitimate mechanisms sit between the two, and every one of them has to be set up in advance because none can be arranged once capacity is lost.

Safety

Step by step

1. Separate the three situations you are planning for.One: you are alive and well but away or unreachable. Two: you are alive but lack capacity through illness or injury. Three: you have died. They need different tools, and a tool designed for one does not work for another — a power of attorney ends at death, and a will does nothing while you are alive.
2. Set up a lasting power of attorney for the middle case.In England and Wales, one for property and financial affairs and one for health and welfare, made through the Office of the Public Guardian and registered before it can be used. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own equivalents. It can only be made while you have capacity, which is exactly why it gets left too late.
3. Use a third-party mandate for day-to-day banking.Most UK banks allow you to authorise another person to operate an account on your behalf without making them a joint owner. It is free, reversible, and far more appropriate than sharing a card and PIN.
4. Consider a joint account for household running costs only.A joint account gives full equal access, which is the point and also the risk — either party can empty it, and both are liable for any overdraft. Suitable for shared bills; a poor place to hold savings unless you are certain.
5. Use a password manager with emergency access.The major password managers have a legacy or emergency access feature: a nominated person can request access, and after a delay you set, they receive it unless you decline. This is the correct way to hand over digital accounts and it breaks nobody's terms.
6. Set up the platforms' own legacy features.The main phone and social platforms have legacy contact or inactive account arrangements that let a nominated person recover photographs and memorialise or close accounts. They take minutes and they are almost never used.
7. Make sure both of you can access the essentials.Both names on the utilities and the tenancy or mortgage correspondence, both able to log into the energy account, both knowing where the insurance is. A household where only one person has ever spoken to the providers is fragile in a very ordinary way.
8. Write the index, and keep credentials out of it.Which providers, which accounts, where the documents are, which solicitor. Not passwords. That document is safe to leave findable, which is what makes it useful.
9. Talk about it while it is theoretical.This conversation is straightforward over a coffee and extremely hard in a hospital corridor. An hour now covers everything that would otherwise be improvised at the worst moment.
10. Review after any change.A new account, a new provider, a change of solicitor, a separation. Powers of attorney in particular should be reviewed if the relationship or the named attorney changes.

Common mistakes

• Keeping a written list of passwords and PINs for a partner — It breaches banking terms, can void fraud protection, and is the first thing a burglar or a visiting fraudster finds. The password manager's emergency access does the same job legitimately.
• Assuming a spouse automatically gets access — They do not. Marriage gives no right to operate someone else's sole account, and banks freeze sole accounts on death until probate. Joint accounts, mandates and powers of attorney are the mechanisms that actually work.
• Waiting until someone is unwell to arrange a power of attorney — It can only be made while the person has mental capacity. Once that is in doubt, the only route left is a deputyship application to the Court of Protection, which is far slower and considerably more expensive.
• Using a power of attorney after the person has died — It ends at death. Continuing to operate the account is unlawful, even where the intention is to pay the funeral, and it causes serious problems with the estate.

Questions people ask