Without sounding really morbid on Christmas Day, does anyone have any bright ideas how your "next of kin" could gain access to your google account (or any other online account) – without the need to regularly maintain a record of your current password somewhere.

Your ideas would be appreciated – its has been bugging me a while (esp since various google accounts have been disabled, and there seems to be limited ability to gain access without a password).

I think there was something about sending a copy of the Death Certificate to Google or something. Quite a while ago, it's probably on Google's help pages.