Digital Estate Planning
At Balance, we provide solutions for your entire estate - not just the physical!
While a Will can appoint someone to deal with your physical estate, dealing with your digital estate may be more difficult.
In the modern world, much of our lives play out in the digital space. We communicate online via email, social media and text. We store memories and important documents in the cloud, our businesses operate through cloud-based systems, our bank and utility accounts are online, and some of us even have purely digital assets like cryptocurrency, domain names and NFTs.
If you lose capacity or pass away, plenty of issues can arise. Tech companies that house your digital information may be reluctant (or refuse) to grant access to your accounts to your executors.
Therefore, it’s important that when making a plan for your physical estate, you make a plan for your digital estate, and that’s where The Balance Prepared Vault comes in…
How do I get access?
1
We will invite you to create a digital vault while preparing your estate planning
documents.
2
Once you’re invited, create a login.
3
Add the contact details of the people you want to receive your digital assets.
4
Upload your documents and create messages and assign them to your chosen contacts.
How does my information get distributed?
After your personal Balance Prepared Vault is set up, you can choose a number of your contacts to be “confidants”. When you die, these confidants must verify that you have died, along with us (your estate lawyer) and any other legal representatives you’ve connected (e.g. your financial planner or accountant) to trigger the distribution process.
When you pass away, your confidants can trigger the release of information by reporting your death. The Balance Prepared Vault will then try and contact you, and if there is no response, it will ask for verification of your death from all of your confidants and legal representatives. If there is unanimous agreement that you have passed away, your information will be distributed within 30 days.
What can I store through The Balance Prepared Vault?
Legal documents (wills, powers of attorney, property title documents, trust and company information)
Information about your
assets and debts
Passwords/access details to online accounts/assets and devices
Photos and videos
Instructions (care of children, pets, for your business, etc.)
Personal messages to
loved ones
Who can access my digital vault?
You are the only person who is able to access your vault and much as you want, once it is created.
When you nominate a person to receive certain documents or information, they can do so from their own login (which they will be prompted to create once this has been assigned to them), however, they will not be able to access any of your other information stored within the vault.
You can limit information and documents so they are only accessible by certain people when you pass away. Or you can make certain things available to certain people while you’re alive as well (so, for example, it can also be a good way to share passwords for people you share accounts with).
On our end, we can upload documents for you like your will and other estate planning documents, but we cannot see any of the information that you have stored unless you specifically choose to share it with us.
Who can access my digital vault?
There is no additional cost for setting up a digital vault if you have your estate plan prepared with Balance. That’s lifetime access to The Balance Prepared Vault.
For those who have not prepared your estate plan with us, you can still create a digital vault for a fee. Get in touch with us to discuss.
