What happens to the member accounts and data of a family plan if the owner of the family plan dies or otherwise stops paying for the family plan? Will the other members of the family plan continue to have access to their Bitwarden accounts but not the premium features? Thanks.
Not an answer to your question, but you can ensure continuity by granting Emergency Access to one of the other plan members.
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Hi @RandomGuy, There is more detail on what happens when an Organization goes unpaid here Organization Renewal | Bitwarden Help Center
And as @grb noted, Emergency Access is always recommended
I read the cited portion of the Bitwarden Help Center and I still don’t know what would happen. And Emergency Access does not solve the issue because each individual member of the family plan has records that would not be accessed with emergency access to the primary owner’s vault.
The Help Center article address addresses what would happen if the Family Plan subscription fee is not paid; presumably this would eventually happen if the owner is deceased and no additional action is taken. When the Family Plan lapses, all surviving members of the plan would lose access to any shared items within the organization’s collections. The documentation is not explicit about this, but presumably, all surviving members’ individual Bitwarden accounts would revert to Free accounts (i.e., all Premium features would be lost).
The suggestion about Emergency Access was for the Family Plan owner to grant Emergency Access to one or more of the other Family Plan members before their demise. If the owner grants Take-Over access to the Emergency Access grantee(s), then that person can take over the owner’s account when needed, in which case the Family Plan would continue to work as before (as long as the person who took over the owner’s account continues to pay the annual subscription fee for the Family Plan).
Yes, the documentation is not explicit about what would happen to each individual surviving member’s individual Bitwarden account, that is why I am asking. You are presuming what would happen to each individual account but the document does not state.
I understood the suggestion about Emergency Access to be for the owner of the family plan to grant access before their demise. I would think it would be obvious that the owner of the family plan could not do so after they are dead. The problem with granting take over access is there are some things that I, as the owner of the family plan, do not want the individual members of my family plan to access, whether I am alive or dead.
My speculation about what happens to the individual accounts is based on the documented consequences of failing to renew a Premium subscription, so I don’t think it is so far-fetched to assume this is what would happen when a Family Plan subscription lapses. But if you need a definitive response, then contact support.
With regards to your objection about the Emergency Access, I would suggest creating a separate Bitwarden account for your personal items, and then use your “owner” account strictly for purposes of managing the Family Plan (with no items stored in the associated individual vault). If there are fewer than 5 other family members, then you can have this personal account also join the Family organization to be able to access shared collections. Grant Emergency Take-Over Access for the “owner” account to the other family members (or some subset of this group). In addition, find a way to share the login credentials to the email address that you use as your Bitwarden username for your personal vault (perhaps this would be the one item stored in the “owner” account’s individual vault); this will allow whoever takes over the “owner” account to delete your personal vault.
If all of this is too complicated, then maybe it is time to deal with succession planning now, and have one of the other family members set up a new organization for the family; then migrate over all shared vault contents from the existing organization to the new organization, and have each family member join the new organization.