Bay Area Estate And Tax Planning Law Firm

What should I do with all my executed planning documents?

On Behalf of | Apr 21, 2020 | Estate Planning |

You certainly merit a shout out and congratulations if you’ve taken the proactive step to work with proven legal counsel and execute tailored estate planning documents.

Like many individuals, you perhaps had some trepidation when beginning that exercise, wondering what it would essentially entail. Some people even question whether they need an estate plan to begin with.

Assuredly, they do. In fact, there are many reasons underscoring why members of virtually every American demographic need to craft a sound estate plan.

If you didn’t know that at the pre-planning stage, you certainly do now, especially if you have enlisted help from an experienced professional with an integrated legal and accounting background. You now likely have well-considered and consummately drafted documents ranging from a will and powers of attorney relevant to finances and health care to perhaps one or more trusts and additional legal instruments.

Here’s a question: What do you do with them?

More specifically, where and how do you store them to ensure their future accessibility and safeguarding?

That is an important consideration, and a primary focus for most planners following document execution. As an article addressing estate documents and their storage notes, individuals who have finalized key instruments “need to make sure they are stored properly and get to the right people.”

A filing cabinet? Safe? Somewhere online? In the oft-referenced “cloud?” Maybe in a bank safe deposit?

People handle storage in different ways, with no single answer being optimal in all cases. The bottom line is that individuals you have specified as needing ready access to documents (an executor/personal representative, agent with a power-of-attorney mandate and other parties) should be unimpeded when they seek to act.

Questions concerning estate document storage can be addressed by your estate planning legal counsel. It often turns out to be the case that the safest and most logical repository for key documents is your attorney’s office.

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