SAFEGUARDING ESTATE DOCUMENTS

SAFEGUARDING IMPORTANT ESTATE PLANNING DOCUMENTS

Congratulations! You finally got around to establishing your estate plan. You should be proud of yourself for ensuring your legacy and helping your trusted loved ones manage your assets in the event of incapacity or death. However, your estate plan can only be useful if your trusted loved ones have access to your estate plan documents upon your incapacity or death. If they’re not available when needed, it’s as if you never prepared your estate plan. With that in mind, you should be asking yourself:

Where should I store my important estate documents to ensure that they will be available to my trusted loved ones in case of an emergency?

One good place to keep your original estate planning documents is in a fire-resistant safe in your home. Just ensure your trusted loved ones know how to access the contents of the safe. Also, be mindful that fire resistance does not necessarily mean foolproof. Did you know that “fireproof” safes can melt in the heat of a house fire? In addition, even heavy safes can float away in a flood, never to be found amongst the scattered debris.

Another idea is to keep your original estate planning documents in a safe deposit box at your bank. Often estate planning documents are too thick to fit into a standard safe deposit box. As a compromise, you might simply keep your original signature pages in your safe deposit box and keep photocopies or electronic copies of the rest of your estate planning documents in other locations.

In addition to paper copies stored in a safe or safety deposit box, it is a very good idea to preserve your estate planning documents electronically. You can store your important documents in a secure cloud back-up or a physical backup to a hard drive or memory stick kept in an offsite location such as a safety deposit box. By this method, you can reprint your estate plan documents as needed. However, certain estate documents like wills require the original to be presented to the court to be enforced. All is not lost if your executor cannot find your will. In Texas, if an original will is lost or destroyed, a copy may be admitted to probate if certain conditions are met. A combined approach of maintaining original and electronic copies of important estate planning documents is advisable.

Regardless of which storage solution(s) you decide upon, you should take immediate action now to ensure your trusted loved ones have readily available access to copies of your important estate planning documents. If you need help organizing and safeguarding your important estate planning documents, we at Legacy Life Services are very experienced in safeguarding important legal documents. Contact us today!

LegacyLifeServicesLLC.com

469-730-6090

David@LegacyLifeServicesLLC.com

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