It’s an unfortunate reality that with the increasing number of natural disasters across the country, including fires, floods, and hurricanes, the chance that you could lose your house and possessions has become more likely. In the event you lose everything, it is important that your estate planning and other important documents are beyond reach and easily retrievable.
If your home is destroyed by a natural disaster or another event, you will want to be able to access important information quickly. First, you need to assemble all your crucial documents and information, including the following:
- Account numbers and passwords. Keep a list of your bank and e-mail accounts and securely store your passwords.
- Contact information. Make sure you know how to contact your attorney, advisors, and insurance company.
- Legal documents. You should have copies of all your legal documents, including your will, trust, power of attorney, and health care surrogate. You also need to know where any deeds and insurance contracts are kept.
- Tax returns. It is recommended that you have three years’ worth of tax returns stored.
- Medical information. You need to keep track of any prescription medicine and health insurance information.
Once you have all your documents and information, you need to store them in a safe and secure location that will survive a natural disaster. A fireproof and floodproof safe in your house is one way to safeguard documents. A safe deposit box at a bank is also an option, but using a safe deposit box means you can only access those documents and information during banking hours. Our office also offers secure storage for our clients’ legal documents and also maintains digital copies of all of our clients’ estate planning documents.
You can also set up your own online storage for important documents. There are online cloud storage systems that ensure your documents are available to you just by logging on. Dropbox, idrive, and Microsoft OneDrive are some online storage options. If you use online storage, make sure you know your passwords. If your information is on a hard drive or thumb drive, store the drives in a secure location, not just in a desk drawer.
Regardless of which storage option you use, be sure your loved ones know where the information is and how to access it.
To make certain you have all the pieces of your estate plan in place and stored properly, contact our office.