Don't Leave a Mess For Your Family - The Fate of Your Podcast After You Die

I'm doing something I've never done on this show before, and that is I'm actually going to take a segment of an episode I did four years ago and replay it. And if you have a will in place, you don't need this episode. So class is dismissed for you.And if it turns out that you're not immortal and are probably going to die, you definitely should listen to this episode because I heard it four years ago, but yet I still haven't listened to it yet. There's a difference. Hit it, ladies. The School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson.Podcasting since 2005, I am your award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson. Thanking you so much for tuning in. If you're new to the show, this is where I help you plan, launch, grow, and sometimes monetize your podcast.My website is schoolofpodcasting.com use the coupon code listener when you sign up for either a monthly, quarterly, or yearly subscription. And of course, that comes with a 30 day money back guarantee.Well, I don't know about you, but it's weird because this kind of makes this show not evergreen. But here In September of 2025, we've had a couple really crappy weeks and one of those included the death of a friend of mine.And I went back and looked and I talked about this exact topic way back in, you guessed it, September of 2021. So it's been four years and I normally do not repeat myself. Well, I guess I'm doing the same thing.I'm repeating this because A, it's important and B, I have new content. But back then we were kind of making a joke about it. And here's how I talked about what do you do when you die? Like, what happens to your podcast?Did you guys hear about Trevor Hill? Yeah, he's. It's hard to believe, but he's dead. Here's. I don't know if you're familiar with him. Here's. He actually, it was recorded.Here's his podcast. What's up, Washcloth Nation? I'm Trevor Hill and this is the Washcloth podcast. Check it out. Today I'm gonna record the show in my car.All right, Morse, Cloth Nation, are you ready to wash? Today we're talking about terry cloth towels. I am so stoked that you are here, which is why I tell people, never podcast in a moving vehicle.That is the definition of distracted driving. But what if that was you?What if you were doing the Washcloth Nation podcast and a truck just basically barreled you over and you had not done anything. You'd not set anything up for your podcast because you thought you were going to be here forever. Well, I reached out to my buddy Gordon Firemark.You can find him the podcastlawyer.com to help me answer that question. What would happen to your podcast if you just vanished?

Well, yeah, you know, first off, I should say I am not a lawyer who practices estate and planning, you know, and wills and trusts and that kind of stuff, but we all get enough exposure to that in law school that I feel like I can at least sort of lay out the issues and the groundwork.So if you get hit by a bus and you die, your family, someone or whoever you have left your stuff to, if you've made a will or a trust, they get everything that you, you know, that you have. That's one part of the equation.The other, and frankly, maybe it's the worst part is, let's say you don't die, you know, but you're, you know, stuck in a. In a hospital bed for six months or something like that. What happens then? You know, the issues are very similar.

The.

The bottom line is you have to. It's important that we all make our intentions and desires known. One of the things everybody at some point thinks about, well, I should make a will.I've got to leave my house to my family, those kinds of things. I'm betting that 99% of the people who have a podcast and make a will never mention the podcast in the will.So it falls under what's called a residuary clause. The residue, the stuff that's left over after we do all this other stuff and it goes to somebody and so on.But if that person isn't equipped to do the things with your podcast that you want done, you know, then your desires may not be honored. So, first of all, you have to decide, what do you want to happen? If you're a solo podcaster, maybe you want it to just, you know, go away.Maybe the thing to do in that circumstance is to record your final episode before it's final and have it on file somewhere. Store it as a.

If you're listening to this, I'm dead.

Or something, you know, I'm gonna get the last word. And, you know, maybe it's just a little episode saying, hey, it's been really a lot of fun.Whatever, for whatever reason, I'm no longer available to do it. So, you know, thanks for being with me or whatever. And then leave some instructions.Here's how you log into my libsyn account or whatever account, you know, and here's how to do everything. Here's where you find the file, here's how, you know, set up the instructions.And the same thing goes for, if you want the show to continue, get those instructions down.So it's an easy, you know, have a manual, an operation manual for your podcast that shows someone, here's how to do it, or here's who to hand it off to. You could designate a podcast producer or a host or someone to wrap up your show.

Do we know what happens if we don't do this?

Yes.

Okay.

It's. It's the dreaded probate court.So the reason you want to have a will and sometimes a trust is to avoid the squabbles, the petty fighting over things, and to avoid having to go through a complicated long term legal process. It might take a year or two for the court to just finally decide who gets what and how things are supposed to be handled.And again, your podcast isn't going to be high on the priority list for the judge or the lawyers, if they even know it exists. So get it, get something down in writing. You know, that's sort of my, my short answer to it.

But yeah, if nothing else, here is the password to my LastPass account.

Right. That's funny. I've got over on my bookshelf, you can't see it, but I have a bookshelf on over here.My wife got us both a copy of a book called I'm Dead now what? And it's just a bunch of form. You fill this out. Here's my credit card numbers, here's my password, you know, all that kind of stuff.That's a really good idea. I can't say that I've actually completely filled it out, but she knows my LastPass account.

Yeah, because I guess especially if this was making money, then people might actually start fighting over it because, I mean, Jimi Hendrix is still making money and he's been gone quite a long time. He might actually be making more money now.

And his family is fighting over it all the time, his daughter and his, I think his uncle is involved in. And everybody's trying to claim, you know, they're the Hendrix Experience.And then another, another outfit that was trying to offer, you know, I mean, yeah, stuff happens. And obviously the more famous and the more money involved, the stickier it gets.But even if you're not big and famous, you might be making a little money. It might be a nice source of income for your family or, you know, more importantly, Somebody's got to own. Is going to own the copyrights in your.Your episodes. And what happens if some of those things later get reused or turned into something that you didn't, you know, nobody knew about?There's all kinds of stuff. So somebody has to know that they're supposed to watch this stuff and be in charge of dealing with it. And.Yeah, I mean, I think that's terrifically important.

Well, I know it's. We kind of mentioned this, but Daniel J. Lewis is a friend of mine, and I am his.If found dead, break glass and call Dave Jackson guy for his podcast.And he has know what they are, but he has directions and instructions on basically what he wants done with his podcast in the event that he is no longer on the planet.

So he's the one. He's the one who's done this. The rest of us need to follow the things.

Yeah, that's it.

No, I mean, that's a really good idea. And, you know, if you. If you have a. Let's talk about this. The specific.So if you don't have a will, it's that probate court, and there are rules of succession that the courts and the. The law sort of follows who's your next of kin, essentially.And things get divided between your spouse, if you have one, and your children, if you have them or, you know, or if you have to move farther, steps out on the family tree in order to get to the people. But it's getting divided up and chopped up into slices each step of the way.And pretty soon you got 10 owners and, you know, all the grandchildren fighting over whose podcast it is or who should be the next guest, God forbid. So having a will is a way of designating, okay, this is the person, or here's what I want you to do with my podcast. Mr. Executor, Madam Executor.And you can make instructions and provide for the funding.You might even make in your will a provision to pay for the Libsyn hosting for the next five or ten years or something like that, just so that your show doesn't just disappear.

I know the tricky part is because I've had this conversation with people, and a lot of times I end up sending it up to other upper management. Someone will say, my husband died. I would like to do this with his podcast. And I'll be like, do you know what email he used?And so now you feel horrible because you have a widow who wants to control the files. But on the other hand, you have to remember that it's The Internet.And this could be somebody wacky or his competition and they just want to delete it, or you never know. So you have to, you have to verify that you own the account.And I'm pretty sure that would be the same case with any host or your web host or anybody like that. So that's where having the login name and password are crucial.Because a lot of times they'll say, can you give me the last four digits of the credit card? That can be used to verification. Like, well, which one? He had seven. It gets really icky. So that's the things that you can avoid by doing this.

Do some planning. I call it estate planning. And that's what it is.Now, another side of this is what if you have multiple hosts and you're one of a team now you've got your former co host who may not want to work with your widow or widower. Maybe they don't get along.Maybe, you know, one of them is, you know, we have ideas about our shows and if, if my co host passes away, I should choose who the new co host is, maybe, or whatever. So again, that can be addressed in a will or if you have a limited liability company or some other kind of written agreement between the hosts.What I call the podcast prenup. It's also the podcast pre death thing, you know, so it establishes, you know, here's what's supposed to happen.And if there's an llc, usually the surviving member of the company has to either buy out the decedent's estate or agree to pay that estate. You know, and then what happens when we bring other people in?These are the kinds of things that get dealt with in these legal documents, that it's not just about insulating from liability and avoiding taxes. Sometimes it's about planning for these kinds of eventualities as well.

Yeah, and it's, it's really just about making a bad situation less bad.It's not going to be good, but it's like, you know, as we record this, the bass player from ZZ Top and the drummer from the Rolling Stones just passed away. And I know the bass player from ZZ Top said, you have my permission, please carry on. And that way, you know, they don't have to worry.Again, it's an awkward situation. It's a business and things like that. But just by having that out in the open, it's easier for the people that are still around.

You know, look, everybody's grieving. And every time you have to deal with friction over something like this, that's adding to the grief, adding to the struggle.And at some point, people throw up their hands and say, I don't care. I don't wanna do it. And then years later, they regret that.So, again, sort of setting everybody up for the easiest transitions possible makes a lot of sense.

You said it. It's kind of similar to the podcast prenup, because what that does is that sets expectations and it's awkward to have those conversations.I'm actually doing that with a podcast I'm setting up and we're going to have those awkward conversations. But once you get through the awkward conversation, you're now everybody knows what's expected, who's on first, and blah, blah, blah.And this is really part of that. I always say, think of the worst case scenario and make a plan for it. And again, it's a weird conversation to have.But on the other hand, none of us are.

Well, not all of us are spring chickens anymore.And the reason you and I started having this conversation was there was a health scare and we started to, you know, wonder, okay, God, what if this is it? You know, having those conversations is important. Frankly, it's. It's just smart business.And even if you don't think of your podcast as a business, it will look like it to the outside world when the time comes to. To judge it.So absolutely, think about what you want, write it down and make a will or make a prenup or form an LLC or do whatever it takes to make sure that those structures are at least. At least the instructions are in place.And worst case scenario, if it does have to go through probate and eventually your spouse or your children have this podcast and don't know what to do with it, they might just let it go. And if you, if you want it to stay going, maybe give them the instructions and the tools to make that happen. So.

All right, well, you can find Gordon over atthepodcast lawyer.com Gordon, thanks so much, Dave.

It's been great to be here. Thank you. And I'm glad we're talking about these kinds of issues.Podcasting is getting to be a little more of a mature industry, and this is the sign that, that that's happening. So I'm glad.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.And I'll links to everything out@schoolofpodcasting.com 1002 and the reason I was like, well, we need to talk about this because I'm guessing you're like me. And that was 2001. And I thought, yeah, I should probably do that now back Then a lot of us were using LastPass.Still, nothing wrong with LastPass, but they got hacked a couple times. And while none of the data actually got, like, leaked, they still kind of got hacked. And So I use 1Password. I know James Kridlin uses Bit Warden.But the bottom line is probably, has it been a year? No, I don't think it's been a year. My buddy Neil galarte, who was 59 at the time, died of a massive heart attack last week or so. I don't know.Time is a weird situation right now, but my friend Todd Cochran, 61, died of a sudden heart attack. And I sit here now and go, if I hopefully not die of a massive heart, I have nothing set up.And that is a tremendous burden on your family, who already is dealing with something. And so I know you don't plan on dying, but, you know, neither did Todd, neither did Neil.And I will put a link in the show notes to an article that James Kridlin from podnews.net talks about.He's like, the fact that you might want to make someone just a trusted team member, even if they never log into your show, because places like Apple, podcasts, Spotify, Buzzsprout, RSS.com, transistor, and Captivate all have way to add team members. So you could add somebody even though they never log in. You're like, hey, that's just there in case you ever need it. Same thing with podpage.And then James recommends Bit Warden. I love one password. And he talks about it's, you know, basically works with everything. You can access everything on apps through a web browser.It's great, he says, so set your main password manager to be, you know, this one password. So that's the thing with one password, or in this case, bid Warden, you. You can't lose that password.And that does not mean write it down on a yellow post it note and put it under your keyboard. Everyone knows that. And then make sure all of your passwords are in whatever system you're using. And he actually has a great point.He says, don't just put buzzsprout. Put kind of like podcast host Buzzsprout, so people know what it is.And then if you're using Bit Warden, they have an emergency access kind of protocol with one password. They send you a PDF and it has all sorts of, you know, double secret probation information on it.And then on that PDF, print it out and put your master password on that. And then just hope you don't die in a fire in your house because that kind of ruins that. Keep that in mind if you're looking for backups of stuff.Backups only count when they are off site because some people are like oh I have my hard drive and then I backed it up to a second hard drive that's in my house. Yeah, that's great until your house catches on fire. So keep that. Some password managers can be set to require physical key.That might be something you want to do. You can add a legacy contact for Apple podcast. Google has an inactive account manager.Now again, if somebody has your 1 password and they and all of your passwords are in there, it comes in handy. And I know James is, I will classify him as very geeky or nerdy. Take your pick, whichever one is the least offensive.And so if he is recommending bit warden and I'm recommending 1Password and when I started using that, PodPage was using it and Brendan is very nerdy as well. And I actually have fairly sensitive information stored in these and it's just one of those things that would be very easy to set up.Now keep in mind we always think we have tomorrow and you can go and set up a will. So I looked into this, like how much is it to set up a will?And as Gordon kind of mentioned, this is something that you should probably get somebody local. Like the laws in Ohio are going to be different than the laws in Wukongshui or someplace in the UK or in, you know, Arizona or whatever.So you want to do something that works locally. There are plenty of places online. I was looking for one for the most. This is one of those things you want to go really with the cheapest people.But I found a website, Law Depot providing legal Solutions for over 22 years. And they say and this would be estate planning. It goes anywhere from $35 a month to 178. 178, yeah. 107. $107.88. It's very specific.A year now you can get a single document license if you don't want to sign up for a yearly subscription. And that runs anywhere from a one time charge of 750 to 120.And when I looked around at some other ones, legal shield and willmaker.com and they're all $200 and above. Trust and Will is another one. And so you're looking anywhere, I'm guessing from 200 bucks to one was close to 500.It kind of depends on what you're doing and things like that. And the one I was looking At Law Depot had an option for something like a just in case document. So that's kind of interesting.Yeah, an end of life plan. Just in case instructions compile your personal, legal and financial information with just in case instructions.Have a single document for quick reference. Helps family or friends handle your affairs in case of emergency.And so I am not a lawyer and so there's a part of me that goes, you could make one yourself, like I said, and have your passwords and all that kind of stuff on one document and then just talk with your family. But here's the thing with that.When it's not a legal document, even if you get them all together, that's where, I don't know, you might want to record that if you want to do this without some sort of legal stamp.

Right.

If you can get all. Let's say you have four people in your family and you all agree that, hey, if I die, you know, my older brother Doug would take care of things.I would have him contact Daniel J. Lewis, whatever it is. Now who gets my guitars? That's going to be an argument between my best friend Scott and my brother Doug. But that's the thing.I don't have this in writing. So if nothing else, you should have one of those and you know, record yourself reading it if you want to avoid the 2 to $400 charge.But the bottom line is why I'm repeating this today and this episode is for me as it is for you. I need not want, I need to do this because we don't plan on it and it's just a mess if you don't. Now luckily there are parts with Todd like geek.New Central was the show he's had for 20 years and I believe his son is taking that over for a little while to get him up to 2000 episodes. But there are some of the things that Todd does that weren't Blueberry. He was the CEO of Blueberry that he just did on his own.And they believe they have his 1Password password. But if they don't, their things are ugly. And then like Gordon said, then you get into probate court and things of that nature.So I'm saying this to you that yeah, I don't plan on dying either, but I should do this.And it's now officially on my to do list because it's, you know, if it's a one time fee, yeah, a couple hundred bucks is, you know, not a ton of money, but it's not a little bit of money and it needs to be done. And it's kind of weird because you don't get any benefit out of it, but you kind of do.And that is that you're making things easier for those you leave behind. The School of Podcasting Next week we are interviewing Caspolino and I brought her on the show because she's been podcasting two years.So this is someone who got over all the imposter syndrome. They got the gear going. And what I loved about Cass is she is not afraid to try. She tried this and it worked. She tried this, it didn't work.And so what I really found out and what I really love about Cass is her attitude. So if you're not subscribed to the show, go out to schoolofpodcasting.com follow and get those episodes the minute they are available.And of course, if you have any topics you would like me to talk about on the show, I'm open to hearing any ideas. Go out to schoolofpodcasting.com contact I'm Dave Jackson. I help podcasters. It's what I do.And I can't wait to see what we're going to do together again. Go out to schoolofpodcasting.com use the coupon code LISTNR and until next week, take care. God bless. Class is dismissed.Hey, this is Doug from King's X and if you like what you hear, go tell someone.