A death in the family comes with sadness, grief, and confusion. Unfortunately, at a time when family members should be free to mourn, they are forced to deal with the logistics of someone’s passing.
Where is their loved one’s estate plan? What’s in it, and who is responsible for carrying out the loved one’s last wishes?
Questions like these can be difficult for your family to answer if you don’t properly plan ahead. It can make a time of grief even more difficult, which is surely not something you want for your family.
Fortunately, you can make the process easier on your family by creating a detailed estate plan and organizing it properly. I’ve written a blog post about proper organization of your estate planning documents.
In addition, you may find a recent article in the New York Times helpful.
The article reports on a number of helpful end of life websites that can help you plan for the future.
Not sure where to start when it comes to estate planning? Everplan is a website that will walk you through what your estate plan could include, provides online storage for your documents, and even offers reviews on funeral homes.
Principled Heart is a website that allows you to store documents, give instructions for pets, and save passwords for financial and social media accounts.
AfterSteps, another website, allows you to pick three people to have access to your account upon your death. At this time, those people would be able to access the account information, which can include your will and last instructions.
There are also websites out there that deal with individual pieces of end-of-life planning, including organizing the calling hours and funeral, dealing with social media accounts, and storing documents.
Because these websites allow you to upload personal and financial information, it’s extremely important for you to be careful. If you do decide to use a website to store your documents or help you plan, make sure that the website is secure.
Photo credit, Flickr contributor, photosteve101
