We need a digital emergency plan, but nobody wants a shared document full of passwords

My spouse and I can find each other's car insurance cards. We know where the spare key is. We do not know how either of us would manage the other's digital life during an emergency.

The problem surfaced when a friend was hospitalized and their partner could not access a utility account that existed only under one email address. Nothing about that story required sharing every password in a spreadsheet, but it did require knowing which accounts existed, who owned them, and where recovery instructions lived.

Our first attempt was a shared document. We stopped when it began collecting account numbers, passwords, and security answers in one cheerful table. Easy access during an emergency would also mean easy access during an ordinary compromise.

We are redesigning the plan around categories and instructions rather than a secret dump. The household inventory can name the provider, account owner, billing purpose, and where the official recovery path or secure record is stored. A few accounts may support an emergency contact, legacy contact, shared vault, or delegated user. Others may need legal or provider-specific arrangements that we should confirm rather than invent.

The plan also needs boundaries. Emergency access is not casual permission to read private messages. Each of us should know what access is intended, under what condition, and which personal areas remain private.

What belongs in a practical digital emergency plan for a US household without creating a document that becomes the biggest security risk in the house? I am interested in the boring operational details: who pays what, how recurring bills are found, where devices and recovery codes fit, and how often the plan is tested.