If all you've done is finalize your clients' estate planning documents, then you haven't done enough

Protecting your clients from probate isn't complete when the estate documents you helped them prepare are executed in final. It should include assurance that those documents can actually be found when loved ones need them most! The single most asked question after clients' final execution is "What do we do with it now?" Attorneys have grappled with an answer to this question for decades, usually suggesting that clients "put them in a safe place, or provide copies to important people." Or "put them in a personal safe, or safety deposit box."

No longer is it the common practice for attorneys to hang on to these documents for clients. In fact, the generation of attorneys for whom this practice was the norm are now mostly retired. Many State Bar Associations, such as California, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, among others, encourage the practice of entrusting clients with the safekeeping of their own estate planning documents. However, more than 50% of Americans do not share information about their estate plans with loved ones nor where they keep those documents.

When Aretha Franklin died in 2018, none of her four children were aware whether she had a will and could not find any estate planning documents. As a result, her sons began the probate process to divide her assets equally. Several months later during the probate process, a will signed by Franklin in 2010 was discovered in a locked cabinet in her home, and yet again another will document dated in 2014 was later discovered between her couch cushions which contradicted the earlier will. This caused significant conflict between her four sons who ended up taking the opposing wills to trial, and a jury decided the distribution of her estate. Estate plans are intended to avoid conflict, and certainly this was not what Ms. Franklin intended when she created her estate plan - and this scenario was avoidable.

TrustSafe founder and CEO Christine Alleman. Photo Provided by TrustSafe

If there is one thing estate planning attorneys know, it is that there are countless stories of how probate has destroyed relationships of surviving loved ones; and some of the worst cases ended up in probate court all the way through distribution, only to thereafter discover a decedent's will in an unusual place. Can you imagine trying to reclaim assets that have already been distributed, particularly cash, because a will was later discovered? I can.

Other estate plan conflicts resulted from a sibling who inserted a fraudulent page to change beneficiaries or administrators, or when a family member forged a signature on a will or trust document. A more recent case involved a disgruntled 60-year-old daughter who absconded with her mother's entire estate plan because she did not agree with her mother's final wishes as to who would be in charge, nor with her choice of gifts to the other adult children. This daughter of course denied taking the documents that disappeared, and her 84-year-old mother had to restate her entire plan.

Estate plans are also frequently lost when clients move or relocate, when personal safes or computers are stolen or become damaged and unrecoverable, and also due to home fires, floods/water damage, and when estate planners retire or pass away.

With more than 30 years in the legal industry, and after more than a decade at Obrien & Peterson PLC in Orange County, Christine Alleman has created a solution to protect estate planners' valuable work on behalf of their clients to avoid scenarios such as the foregoing. Vital estate documents can now be stored and managed in a TrustSafe digital vault which may be the single solution in protecting your clients and their loved ones from future conflict over missing or altered estate plans. The Uniform Law Commission began moving the estate planning industry into the digital world by creating the Electronic Wills Act in 2019, and then the Electronic Estate Planning Documents Act, which passed in late 2023. This was particularly important in the post-COVID-19 world where people everywhere learned to more effectively function in a digital realm. Access to these documents during your clients' lives can be extremely valuable in times of medical emergency where sharing healthcare directives and power of attorneys with medical professionals and family are conveniently just a click away from any mobile device when stored in a TrustSafe digital vault.

Storing wills, trusts, power of attorneys, healthcare directives, life insurance and investment documents in a TrustSafe digital vault should be the final step all estate planners take in protecting the valuable documents they prepare on behalf of clients toward protecting valuable assets. TrustSafe documents can be accessed 24/7/365 during clients' lives, but equally importantly, beneficiaries can search and actually find these documents after clients' deaths from anywhere in the world using a cell phone or computer. There is no subscription and the low one-time fee can be added to your retainer schedule of fees, then invoiced for up to 45 days after creating client accounts. This certainly could have made all the difference in protecting Aretha Franklin's intended plan from family conflict and confusion.

As the world continually progresses in technological expansion, TrustSafe digital vaults may be the single safe space to connect benefactors of now to beneficiaries of the future. If you helped them create a plan, then help them protect that plan by storing it in a TrustSafe digital vault, so your clients can truly rest in peace when the time comes.

To learn more, visit TrustSafeLLC.com.