Dad Is Dead

Automatic digital legacy planning - no lawyers needed

Visit Website
September 23, 2026 Wrote up why I'm building Dad Is Dead — and what I think I'm still missing

I wrote up the full story in a separate post today: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/built-a-tool-that-notifies-your-family-automatically-if-you-go-quiet-zero-customers-so-far-heres-the-idea-and-what-i-think-i-m-missing-062d5a084c

Short version: Dad Is Dead is a digital legacy tool built around a proof-of-life check-in — if you go quiet, your designated custodians are notified automatically, with control over exactly what each of them can see and when. It's live, it works, and it has zero real customers so far.

If you've dealt with a parent's or spouse's accounts after they passed, or you've been putting off your own version of this, I'd genuinely like to hear what the hardest part was.

6 Comments

  1. 1
    I think the name might be too controversial, although certainly memorable. Imagine a family seeing it in an email right after a real loss. 😮😮😮
    1. 2
      Fair point, and you're not the only one saying it — a couple other people have flagged the same thing on the other post. We went for memorable on purpose, but hearing it independently from a few different people now makes me think the "family seeing it in an email right after a real loss" scenario is a real risk, not just an edge case. Genuinely reconsidering the name because of it.
      1. 1
        Maybe it's worth experimenting with names like "Still with us", "Life Pulse", "Heart Beat" etc? You domain name has dashes in it anyway, so this is not what people would naturally type in.
  2. 1
    When people describe managing a loved one's affairs, what recurring problem creates the strongest urgency—discovering accounts, gaining access, or coordinating responsibility before something happens?
    1. 1
      Honestly, from the conversations I've had, it's coordinating responsibility before something happens — specifically, nobody had agreed in advance on who should act and when. Discovering accounts and gaining access were real pain, but people described those as solvable-with-enough-time problems. The "nobody decided who's supposed to do this, or when" part is what caused actual paralysis. That's basically the bet the whole product is built on — solve the trigger/coordination problem first, and the access/discovery problem gets a lot more tractable once someone's actually been designated and notified.
      1. 1
        That coordination problem is sharper than the access problem. Could be useful to dig into that a bit more by email sometime.

About

Everyone agrees they should get their affairs in order, and almost nobody does - no clear trigger for when someone else should get access. We built a proof-of-life check-in to solve exactly that.