Estate Planning Documents and Digital Assets

If you are thinking about making or updating your estate plan, good for you! There is no better way to ensure that your loved ones know and carry out your wishes. But creating your estate documents isn’t the end of the story; you need to store them in a way that is both safe and accessible to the people who will need them. 

And estate planning itself is more complicated than it was just a couple of decades ago. The reason? A variety of digital assets. Most of us live at least part of our lives online: think email, blogging, photo and music storage, social media, online banking and shopping, and cryptocurrency. When you consider sharing your important documents for estate planning with your loved ones, don’t forget to include information about these digital assets. 

Let’s talk about how to organize estate documents, and where to store your legal documents so that your loved ones can gain access to them at the right time.

What Information to Leave For Your Executor

As part of creating your estate plan, you will choose someone to manage your affairs when you no longer can. That person may be the executor of a will, or the trustee of a trust. It’s also possible that you will need someone like an agent under a power of attorney or a guardian or conservator to help manage your affairs while you are still alive in the event you become incapable of doing so. 

Your executor, or personal representative, will need to step into your shoes when it comes to managing financial and other affairs. That is more challenging than it seems at first glance. Your executor may not know what they don’t know. They will probably assume you have a bank account and may be able to find some account information. But they may not be aware of all of your accounts, investments, and other assets. 

In times past, your executor might be able to rifle through your nightstand or desk and find financial statements, bills, and other documentation that could at least help them know what accounts they needed to deal with, if not how to gain access. Now that task is often much harder because many accounts and transactions are primarily or totally online, with no paper trail for an executor to follow. 

Administering an estate under those circumstances is like doing a jigsaw puzzle—only you don’t have the benefit of the picture on the box, and you don’t know how many pieces the puzzle is supposed to have and if any are missing. With a little planning, you can avoid a frustrating experience for your executor. 

Start by creating a master list of documents and assets, their location, and information needed to access them. Your estate planning attorney can help you with this. Some of the information your personal representative may need includes:

• Last Will and Testament
• Trust documents
• Powers of attorney (financial and medical)
• Bank statements
• Brokerage statements
• Pension, 401(k), IRA, and other retirement account information, including the identity of beneficiaries
• Life, health, vehicle, and homeowners’ insurance policy documents
• Deeds to real estate, including timeshare property
• Property tax records
• Social Security records
• Vehicle and boat titles
• Birth, marriage, and death certificates
• Military discharge papers and veterans’ benefits information
• Information regarding any storage units you rent
• Location and account information for any safe deposit boxes you rent

At Fremstad Law, we have also developed a downloadable Digital Assets Worksheet for our clients, since much of the information an executor needs is available only or primarily online. This document is easy to update as your digital assets change; keep a current version with your estate planning documents. 

How to Store Your Estate Planning Documents

If you have ever been thrust into the position of having to manage an estate or an elderly loved one’s business, you understand how frustrating it can be to not access the information you need. At the same time, it’s important to keep sensitive information like financial data and account details private so that not just anyone can reach them. 

To make your executor’s life easier, you should have a master inventory of your assets for your executor to reference, including your digital assets. Your inventory should include all information necessary for your executor to access the assets after your death (or for your conservator to access them after your incapacity). This inventory will make it much easier for your executor to carry out your estate plan.

Many people assume that their safe deposit box at their bank is the ideal place to store their estate plan. It is actually not. After your death, your executor will need to submit your original will to the probate court so that they can be granted the legal authority to act on behalf of the estate. If the original will is in the safe deposit box, your executor cannot get to the document that would give them the legal authority to access the box. It’s a Catch-22. If you want to store your estate plan and related documents in a safe deposit box, you should make your intended executor co-owner on the account. 

Depending on where you live, you may be able to store your original estate planning documents with your attorney; just make sure your intended executor has the attorney’s contact information. By directing your personal representative to your attorney, you not only lead them to your estate plan, but to an experienced professional who can guide them through probate or trust administration. 

You may also be able to register your will with the probate court in your county. A fireproof and waterproof safe in your home is another possible storage option for not only your estate plan but for other important documents. If possible, keep those related documents in a binder with tabs or an accordion folder so your executor can more easily make sense of them.  

You probably don’t want to give your executor every detail of your personal and financial information until they need it, and that’s fine. Just make sure they know:

• The location of your estate plan, asset inventory, and important documents, and any combination or password needed to access them;
• The contact information for your estate planning attorney and any other professionals, like an accountant, who may need to be involved with your estate. 

Fremstad Law: Moving You Forward

We understand that making the effort to gather, organize, and safeguard all this information can be stressful. Just imagine how much more stressful it will be for your personal representative and loved ones if you don’t. 

Fortunately, you don’t have to figure it out on your own. Fremstad Law offers a service to help you identify and assemble the documents your family will need in the event of your incapacity or death. These documents include not only your will, trust, and powers of attorney, but insurance policies, investment, vehicle records, property deeds, bank accounts, and more, consolidated in one place. We guide you through the process of putting everything together in an organized system that will empower your loved ones to manage your needs or your estate. We cannot take away their grief, but we can avoid additional frustration and confusion by giving them the tools they need to move forward. 

If  you have questions about how to create, organize, or store your estate planning documents, please contact Fremstad Law to schedule a consultation.