How can my business partners access my account upon my death or inability to continue

Question

I am working on a Health startup with a couple of friends as partners. I do all the technology and they run the business and Sales. I had a contract written up by lawyers that outlines my compensation and that it goes to my estate upon by death. However until I am paid out a set amount of money (either from ongoing commissions, or a sale of the company), I am not providing my business partners with any access into the AWS accounts.

Their concern is rightfully so, what if something happens to me? It can be for any reason (death, incarceration, severe illness, etc.). What would be the proper way to handle this? I read somewhere you can show a death certificate to Amazon, but what about in the other situations.

I assume this is something I should spell out in my contract with my partners. But will AWS know how to handle this, is there some documentation I can submit to them in advance as well? I'm hoping this is a standard kind of scenario and there are already procedures for handling this.

Answer

Is this a personal account (your own presumably) or a company account? https://aws.amazon.com/free/registration-faqs/#General

> ***What is the difference between Personal and Professional accounts? Which account should I choose while signing up?**
> 
> Professional accounts are accounts that are created for a business or at an enterprise level, whereas Personal accounts are created for learning and experimenting with AWS services.

If you have access to an account manager then they would be able to advise, but I guess the reason you're asking on here is that you don't. The AWS re:Post community isn't equipped to handle things like this, but AWS as a company must have come across it on plenty occasions.

This thread on Reddit last year, which had contributions apparently from AWS, suggests that logging a billing & accounting support case should be the first step that the surviving partners take https://www.reddit.com/r/aws/comments/136o9n5/aws_account_owner_died/

There are also many other responses from people that have been through this and similar scenarios before.

How can my business partners access my account upon my death or inability to continue

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