Lawyers Fear For Inheritances Locked in Digital Accounts

The digital world makes estate inheritance for the unprepared a nightmare. Unfortunately, nearly everyone is ill prepared. Password resets, digital account tracking, identity verification, and more have made the annoying process of inheritance ten times more difficult and reduced peace of mind for fiduciaries and beneficiaries alike.

Inheritance was not always so complex, estate inheritance in a purely physical world is fairly straightforward. Physical documents in one’s residence and office made tracking accounts, money, and possessions simple: there were literal paper trails to follow, and there were only a couple of them! But loved ones are now passing fewer and fewer of these easy-to-follow trails onto their kin while multiplying their financial accounts and personal data. This explosion of digital accounts is worrying, and probate lawyers agree. Today we will review a 2020 study of probate lawyers emphasizing the difficulties associated with digital estate planning.

38% of people did not know where a loved one held all their financial accounts when administering and dealing with the loved one’s estate. And that makes sense, as 88% of probate lawyers believe digital banking makes it harder to locate a deceased person’s accounts. But the problems with estate management continue well past digital banking and accounts. Leading probate lawyers believe that many of the hallmarks of the digital era will make it more difficult to access the needed accounts of belated loved ones.

As more people store information on computers and phones, further information is left at risk, and in the hands of biometric security (Fingerprints, eye retinas, etc). More and more people rely on these instead of passwords, often forgetting their passwords entirely. Probate lawyers share these concerns as well as 56% of them think biometric security will make accessing their multitude of accounts and data more difficult too.

It's important for everyone to save themselves and their kin time and stress as it relates to estate management and distribution. That's where Bequest comes in! Bequest does the heavy lifting for those preparing their estate. Digital bank account information, personal data, pictures, cryptocurrencies, and more all safely secured and unified under one platform: that is what Bequest delivers!

Bequest combines the simplicity that family needs in times of passing, with the privacy and sensitivity required for digital account.

If you or a client are thinking about setting up an estate plan or want to minimize the pain of the estate management process, book a call for a demo with Bequest here.