Keeping important documents safe

Do you keep all your legal and business documents in one safe place?

The irony with this issue is not that people fail to keep their documents safe; it is that they keep them TOO safe. It is all too common, when someone passes away, that they hid the documents so well, or never wrote down the passwords, that their heirs and family cannot track down the various accounts. Worse, the heirs may not know that some accounts exist in the first place!

You have to weigh which is the greater risk: safety or sharing. There is that awkward little dance that occurs between elderly parents and their adult children where neither side entirely trusts the other. It is no use storing the passwords on a computer if no one else knows the password to access the computer in the first place. Most financial and estate planners recommend you write down your user names and passwords to online accounts, along with any additional instructions. But that is where the agreement ends.

I am wary of the various service providers out there. Better to find a family member you trust and leave all the information with them or tell them where they can find it in the event of death. I don’t like leaving any of it in the computer since we upgrade computers and change passwords fairly regularly.

Here is a great Wall Street Journal article listing important papers you should be keeping safe. It includes (but is not limited to) a will, marriage license, divorce papers, medical instructions (living will, medical history, durable power-of-attorney, do-not-resuscitate order), housing, land and cemetery deeds, vehicle titles, tax returns, a list of bank accounts, life insurance policies, 401ks, pensions and annuities along with passwords.

Photo: Wikipedia, shows part of the first page of Marie Antoinette’s will.