|
Pay your bills online?
Use a program to keep your financial records and brokerage accounts?
Do your taxes online? Good for you. Wow
- you have everything beautifully organized and in one
place.
How
about your elder? Not so
many of our parents' generation, but quite a few nevertheless, are computer savvy and have much or all of their important stuff on the computer.
And when you get hit by a bus, or fall down a manhole, who will know whether you've paid your taxes, where your assets are, and what provisions you've made?
If
no one has access to your passwords, no one will.
You could be sentencing them to weeks or months of anxiety, work and possible terrific expense trying to
reconstruct what they need to know.
Anyone computer-savvy enough to be
keeping electronic legal and financial records is (I hope) savvy enough to be
backing things up, at least now and then.
So if the machine crashes, we have the information safe.
But it's a nightmare if something happens to you, or your parent, and no one has
the passwords to get at vital information.
We're told not to give anyone our password.
And not to write it down. And not to store it on the computer.
We're supposed to use passwords that aren't obvious.
So what does the grieving widow(er), or the person who is closing out
your estate do when everything is locked behind
password- protected gates?
Put your password list in your safety deposit box.
Or give it to your attorney to keep with your Will, if there isn't anyone else you trust.
And for
heaven's sake, don't keep your Will or other vital legal or medical information online.
You have no idea who's running those sites, who they are sharing information with, or
when they might close up shop and disappear altogether.
Don't put your passwords in the Will itself, either, because that's a public document as soon as it's filed, and anyone could have access.
Your heirs will love you for it and they'll remember you fondly forever.
|
