Author: Richmond Cariaga

Avoid Living Probate: How to Keep Guardians and Conservators Out of Your Estate

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While many proactive individuals understand the importance of having a comprehensive estate plan, they often assume that their plan addresses only what happens after they pass away. However, a comprehensive estate plan is also meant to positively impact your life by planning for and providing necessary protections while you are still around to reap the benefits.

Planning for Incapacity

Incapacity—the inability to handle your own personal or financial affairs because of a mental condition—can happen at any stage of life. Nearly 29 percent of adults across all age groups live with some form of disability, and about 14 percent live specifically with a cognitive impairment.1 The likelihood of experiencing incapacity only increases with age: More than 30 percent of Americans over 65 have a disability, and that number goes up to more than half for those above 75 years of age.2 Many people who reach advanced age eventually experience physical or cognitive decline that affects their ability to manage their personal, financial, or legal affairs. In many cases, this loss of capacity is caused by dementia, a stroke, or other age-related cognitive impairments that make it difficult or impossible for an individual to make informed decisions or advocate for themselves. Proactive estate planning allows you to decide in advance how your affairs will be managed if you become incapacitated. Without a comprehensive plan, the court may have to intervene and appoint someone to act on your behalf. At that point, decisions made (or not made) earlier in life can have major repercussions for you and your loved ones, affecting your lifestyle, medical care, and financial security.

Here is an example:

When Alex was in his 40s, he put together a cursory estate plan—a simple will detailing who would get his accounts and property upon his death. However, Alex did not update his plan as he aged. In his late 70s, he developed Alzheimer’s disease, and his family suddenly found themselves unclear about who could step in and act on his behalf or even what his healthcare and financial wishes were. Because Alex had not legally appointed an individual to handle his affairs for him if he became incapacitated, the court had to get involved and appoint a guardian.

What Is a Guardian or Conservator?

A guardian or conservator is an individual appointed by the court to make decisions on behalf of an incapacitated person who did not appoint someone to do so through comprehensive estate planning prior to losing capacity. A guardian or conservator of the person makes decisions about an individual’s personal and medical care, while a guardian or conservator of the estate manages their financial and legal affairs. The specific terminology may differ by state, but the underlying responsibilities are generally the same. The name of the court proceeding for appointing a guardian or conservator may also vary. Some states call it a guardianship, others a conservatorship, and still others use the term plenary guardianship. People may also informally refer to it as living probate.

Four Reasons to Avoid Guardianship or Conservatorship

In a living probate proceeding, the court’s goal is to determine and implement solutions that will serve the incapacitated individual’s best interests. However, relying on a court-appointed guardianship or conservatorship is not an ideal substitute for comprehensive estate planning for several reasons:

  1. High costs. Simply put, living probate is expensive. Legal fees and court costs can quickly chip away at the value of your money and property, leaving less for your care and for your loved ones after you pass.
  • Family conflict. Another significant drawback of living probate is the potential for family conflict. When a court must decide who will manage an incapacitated person’s affairs, relatives may disagree over who is best suited for the role or how decisions should be made. These disputes can quickly escalate into emotional and expensive legal battles, straining relationships and diverting focus from the incapacitated person’s care and well-being.
  • Lack of privacy. Living probate is a court-supervised proceeding and becomes part of the public record, meaning that aspects of your private, medical, and financial affairs are often open to public view. Returning to our example, if Alex had known he could have addressed incapacity in his estate plan, he might have appreciated that doing so would spare his loved ones the financial and emotional burden of a living probate proceeding. Perhaps even more important, he may have seen the value of keeping his personal and financial affairs private rather than having them aired in a public forum.
  • Lack of clarity. Living probate is also full of guesswork. If Alex had appointed people he trusted as agents under medical and financial powers of attorney and expressed his wishes for end-of-life medical care in his estate plan, his affairs would be handled exactly as he wished during his incapacity. However, without having legally documented his preferences, he has no control over clarifying his wishes, and the court must intervene. While the court does its best to determine what is in Alex’s best interests, it may appoint someone whom Alex would not have wanted to act for him. Additionally, once Alex’s care is under court supervision, the court may impose restrictions or require prior approval before certain decisions or transactions can be made.

How to Structure Your Estate Plan

Fortunately, living probate can be avoided. You can take a few specific steps in your estate plan to ensure that your affairs never end up in a court-appointed guardian’s hands:

  • Powers of attorney. A complete estate plan includes durable powers of attorney, which allow you to appoint trusted individuals, called agents,to act on your behalf if you become unable to manage your financial or medical affairs. These documents ensure that the people you select, not the court, are the ones making decisions for you. In addition to granting authority over healthcare or finances, powers of attorney can also include nominations for a guardian or conservator in case court involvement ever becomes necessary. While a judge still makes the final appointment, naming your preferred person in advance gives you a voice in the process and significantly increases the likelihood that your wishes will be honored. There are several types of powers of attorney, each serving a specific purpose. For example, a healthcare power of attorney allows a trusted individual to make medical and personal care decisions if you cannot, while a general durable (financial) power of attorney authorizes someone you trust to manage your financial affairs, such as paying bills, handling investments, or making business-related decisions. Together, these documents ensure continuity, reduce family conflict, and keep control in the hands of those you choose instead of leaving those decisions to a judge who has never met you.
  • Long-term care planning. You may never need long-term care in the form of ongoing assistance with daily activities or medical support that can arise from illness, disability, or aging. However, building a long-term care strategy into your estate plan provides peace of mind and ensures that you will receive care according to your wishes if it becomes necessary. For example, you can state in an advance directive your preferences regarding your end-of-life medical treatments. This type of planning may also help protect your money and property from being used up on medical expenses instead of going to your beneficiaries.

Avoiding guardianship and conservatorship—and the stress and expense of living probate—is a relatively pain-free process if handled well ahead of time. Call us today to review the parts of your estate plan that may need updating to ensure the best possible outcome for you and your loved ones. We can quickly ensure that your plan is comprehensive, current, and built to protect your wishes.

  1. Disability Impacts All of Us Infographic, CDC (Apr. 14, 2025), https://www.cdc.gov/disability-and-health/articles-documents/disability-impacts-all-of-us-infographic.html. ↩︎
  2. Aging and the ADA, ADA Nat’l Network, https://adata.org/factsheet/aging-and-ada (last visited Nov. 7, 2025). ↩︎

Passing Along a Benefit, Not a Burden: Why Planning for Absence and Incapacity Is Indispensable for Business Owners

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As a business owner, you have likely considered establishing an estate plan to ensure your company’s continued success after your passing. However, comprehensive estate planning also addresses what will happen if you become mentally incapacitated (unable to manage your affairs) due to illness, injury, or cognitive decline, or if you need to be away from your business for an extended period.

Why Incapacity Planning Matters

As a business owner, your responsibilities likely encompass the company’s day-to-day operations and planning for its future growth and profitability. However, incapacity can strike unexpectedly and create chaos in your business if you have no contingency plan in place. Also consider what would happen if you were unable to participate in your business due to issues unrelated to incapacity, such as an extended trip abroad or a medical diagnosis that requires you to spend several months in treatment.

Without you at the helm, your business will need someone who not only has the business knowledge and skill to step in for you but also the legal authority to make decisions, sign contracts, access bank accounts, and manage payroll. If business operations grind to a halt because you cannot be there, the impact could be costly and detrimental to your business’s overall success. Your employees may struggle without clear direction, and your clients could experience delays or lose trust, which could result in long-term financial damage. Neither your loved ones nor your business partners can step in and act on your behalf without the proper planning documents in place. Without a legally valid incapacity plan that is reflected within your estate and business plans, your family or partners may be forced to petition the court to appoint someone who can take charge in your stead. However, court involvement can be time-consuming and expensive, and a judge may appoint someone you would not have chosen to take control of your business and finances.

Key Components of an Incapacity Plan for Business Owners

It is important to carefully consider whom you would want in charge of the business’s day-to-day operations in your absence. This individual should not only understand the business but should also have the respect of your employees and the confidence to make decisions without your guidance.

Durable Financial Power of Attorney

A durable power of attorney (DPOA) allows you to designate someone (called your agent or attorney-in-fact) to handle your affairs if you are unable to do so. As a business owner, you may benefit from two separate DPOAs: a general financial DPOA for your personal finances and an expanded DPOA with provisions that are specific to your business and allow your agent to manage your company, especially if you choose different people for these roles. If you choose the same person to manage both your personal and business matters, a single DPOA may be sufficient, but it must include detailed provisions granting your agent full authority to carry out your business-related responsibilities. Without clearly defined powers, such as the ability to access business bank accounts, manage payroll, make management decisions, or vote on your behalf, your agent’s authority may not be recognized by banks, vendors, and clients, leaving your business unable to operate when it matters most.

Medical Directives

A healthcare power of attorney allows you to select someone you trust (your healthcare agent or proxy) to make decisions regarding your medical care if you cannot communicate such decisions yourself.

For example, if you become severely ill and cannot run your business, having a named healthcare agent ensures that decisions regarding your care can be made without delay, ideally reducing the time you are away from your business. With this document, your agent will also be empowered to quickly inform your key partners or leadership team of your condition and prognosis, helping to prevent confusion and disruption to business operations.

In addition to your healthcare power of attorney, a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) release form allows you to name trusted individuals who can directly access your medical information. While this document does not grant anyone the authority to make medical decisions for you (as a healthcare power of attorney does), it ensures that key people, such as your business partner or manager, can stay informed about your condition if your health affects business operations or decision-making.

Revocable Living Trust

For many business owners, transferring ownership of their business interest to a revocable living trust is the most seamless way to handle incapacity. A revocable living trust is a legal arrangement that allows you to transfer ownership of assets, including your business interests, to the trust while you are alive and in control. Typically, you name yourself as the initial trustee, maintaining complete control of all trust assets, including the day-to-day management tied to your business interest. You will also name a successor trustee in the trust agreement who can immediately step in to manage trust assets if you become incapacitated or pass away. This successor trustee can manage your business according to the instructions outlined in the trust agreement and without requiring court approval to act. Overall, using a trust helps ensure a seamless transition of management, protects your company from disruption, and keeps your affairs private and out of the probate process.

Buy-Sell Agreement with an Incapacity Clause

If your business has partners or co-owners, it is advisable to create a buy-sell agreement that outlines how your share of the business will be managed, valued, or transferred in the event of your departure from the company, incapacity, or death. Including an incapacity clause in your buy-sell agreement helps keep your business running smoothly and protects your loved ones from being thrust into difficult or unfamiliar roles. It ensures that, if you become incapacitated, your partners can continue operating the business without interruption, following a clear plan for how your ownership interest will be handled. This language not only safeguards the company’s stability but also provides financial security and clarity for your family during an already stressful time. This clause should also define clear triggers for incapacity—such as certification by two physicians—to avoid uncertainty or disputes.

Business Instruction Letter

A business instruction letter is typically a legally nonbinding standalone document, but it can be extremely helpful and provide necessary insight. It gives practical guidance to help your chosen agent, successor trustee, or interim decision-maker step smoothly into their role. While it carries no legal authority on its own, it can support your formal estate planning documents by outlining day-to-day operational details such as key vendor and client contacts, the roles and responsibilities of essential employees, and instructions for securely accessing important digital accounts or records.

If you have family members working in your business, you can also use this letter to explain what will happen in your absence and who will take over, so no one will assume that they are in charge simply because they are family. It is important to remember that, even if your family is involved in your business, it does not mean they are the best choice to succeed you.

Your Business Deserves a Backup Plan

Your leadership skills may be one of your most valuable assets. Protecting your business from the unknown is not just smart, it is part of your responsibility as an owner. Incapacity planning ensures that your enterprise, employees, and family members are protected, regardless of what happens. From establishing processes to manage your potential incapacity to helping you select the right individual to run your business while you are away, we can support you in developing a plan that will protect both your livelihood and your loved ones.

Protect Your Estate from Cyberthreats

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Well, that doesn’t seem right. 

It usually starts with something small. A strange email from a bank you do not recognize. A new credit card account you do not remember opening. A password reset link you never requested. A notice from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that someone has already filed a tax return in your name. 

At first there is confusion. No, there’s no way that’s right. 

Then anxiety sets in. Am I being scammed? 

After that, you may spend hours or days on the phone with banks, credit bureaus, and government agencies to reach an unsettling conclusion: Someone has my information and is pretending to be me. 

Next comes anger, frustration, and a sense of violation. How could this happen?

Acceptance eventually sets in, along with a determination to never let scammers get the upper hand again. But sometimes it is too late. The damage has been done—to finances, reputation, peace of mind, and, sometimes, legacy. 

Preventing cybercrimes such as identity theft starts with awareness, including the recognition that cybersecurity is not just an IT problem or something that affects businesses. It is a personal wealth preservation issue that can affect you not only now but also after you are gone, making it crucial to strengthen your digital defenses long before your estate reaches administration. 

Scammers routinely target estates, executors, and grieving families, often by mining obituaries and public probate records to launch phishing, impersonation, and identity-theft schemes.

Growing Cyberthreats and Their Impact on Estate Planning

You may have started to take the first steps toward creating a digital estate plan, but that planning should also account for the growing risks that cybercriminals pose to both your assets and your legacy.

  • Seventy-three percent of US adults have experienced some form of online scam or cyberattack. Most report weekly scam calls, text, and emails.1 
  • Americans reported 2.6 million fraud cases and 1.1 million identity-theft incidents to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2024. Losses exceeded $12.5 billion, a 25 percent increase over the prior year.2
  • Identity theft is now one of the most common types of consumer fraud, with nearly 750,000 cases in the first half of 2025 alone.3 
  • Seventy-six percent of consumers say they feel more anxious about cybersecurity today than they did two years ago, driven by impersonation enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) and increasingly sophisticated scams.4

Cybercriminals now use AI-generated voice clones to impersonate loved ones, breached financial and medical data to answer security questions, and automated scraping of public records to target people with unnerving precision. You will very likely be targeted at some point and may have already been a victim of cybercrime. Even if you avoid direct harm during your lifetime, your estate and heirs may be more vulnerable after your death.

Why Estates Can Be Vulnerable to Cybercriminals

The FBI reports that in 2024, Americans over age 60 were the most frequently targeted demographic for online scams and fraud and lost the most money to cybercrimes.5

Fraud schemes targeting the estates of people who have passed away are another area of growing cybercrime concern.6 As with older adults, estates, particularly those of seniors, are often perceived as holding substantial assets. The individuals and property involved with estate administration can also create unique vulnerabilities that attract cybercriminals. 

  • The loved ones left behind are often overwhelmed and distracted after a loved one’s death, making them more susceptible to scams. Cybercriminals use times of chaos, confusion, and heightened emotion to their advantage, preying on feelings such as fear, urgency, and trust during times when people may let their guard down. 
  • Executors may be unfamiliar with digital security, making phishing attempts more successful.
  • Multiple parties (attorneys, advisors, banks, beneficiaries) are exchanging sensitive documents during estate administration, sometimes through unsecured or informal methods.
  • The deceased person’s dormant accounts are often easy entry points for identity theft because they often go unmonitored, rely on outdated passwords, and may be tied to personal information that criminals can exploit before anyone realizes that there is a problem.
  • Scammers routinely impersonate banks, government agencies, attorneys, or even the executor.
  • Probate is public, giving criminals a ready-made list of heirs, contact information, and sometimes asset details.

Social engineering attacks—scams that use deception rather than technical hacking—that rely on sophisticated cybertools such as AI to exploit basic human psychology and manipulate people are on the rise.7 And just as cybercriminals capitalize on natural disasters8 and tech outages,9 the estate administration process is a scenario that could provide the perfect opening for fraud and deception. 

A Digital Defense Plan for Your Estate

You would not leave your physical property unsecured, but without a digital defense plan, you are essentially leaving the front door unlocked to cyberthieves, compromising your traditional and digital assets. Understanding points of vulnerability and taking a few simple precautions can help reduce your exposure to cybercrimes. 

Issue: Email is the weakest link. Most cyberattacks begin with email.

  • What you can do: Use strong passwords, multifactor authentication (MFA), and encrypted document-sharing platforms. Avoid sending unprotected sensitive materials, and encourage your executors to follow the same security practices when administering your estate.

Issue: Executors cannot secure what they cannot see. Unknown or dormant accounts often remain open and unmonitored, making them prime targets for takeover and identity theft.

  • What you can do: Create a detailed inventory of important digital accounts and storage locations. Ensure that fiduciaries (such as your executors and advisors) know what accounts must be closed, monitored, or secured.

Issue: Sensitive legal and tax documents are insecurely stored or shared. Wills, statements, and tax documents often sit unprotected in inboxes or cloud folders.

  • What you can do: Store documents securely using online encrypted folders or password-protected vaults, and ensure that fiduciaries know where to find documents and how to access them.

Issue: Executors may not be prepared for digital threats. Phishing attempts surge during estate administration, and many executors are unfamiliar with digital-security practices.

  • What you can do: Name a tech-literate executor (or coexecutor) who is comfortable managing digital accounts and security protocols. Include with your estate planning documents a brief “executor security checklist” that outlines verification steps (such as confirming account ownership and access authority) and highlights common red flags, such as urgent payment requests, unexpected account changes, or requests for credentials.

Issue: Probate exposes personal information. Public probate court filings often disclose the names and contact information of executors and beneficiaries and may even include a list of assets with their values—information that scammers can easily weaponize.

  • What you can do: Talk with your attorney about whether trust-based planning or other probate-avoidance tools can reduce public exposure of your estate and limit targeted fraud.

Issue: Heirs and beneficiaries are prime targets for impersonation scams. Criminals impersonate banks, attorneys, courts, or even executors to solicit money or sensitive data. For example, a scammer may send an email posing as the estate’s bank or attorney, claiming an urgent problem with an account and requesting immediate payment or login credentials from a beneficiary or executor.

  • What you can do: Educate executors and beneficiaries about how to spot and avoid common scams10 and establish a simple verification process for unexpected requests.

Issue: Identity theft of the deceased is common. Dormant and unmonitored accounts create easy entry points and are frequently hijacked after death. Criminals use a decedent’s information found in public records and online obituaries to open credit accounts, redirect mail, submit false change-of-address forms, or file fraudulent tax returns.

  • What you can do: Develop a postdeath digital and identity-protection checklist for your estate and executor. This should include promptly notifying the major credit bureaus of the death, placing a credit freeze or fraud alert on the decedent’s credit file, forwarding and monitoring mail, filing the final tax return and IRS death notification, and quickly closing, consolidating, or memorializing unused online accounts and financial profiles.

Do Not Become a Cybercrime Statistic

Cybercrime statistics are sobering. We all know the risks of falling prey to online fraudsters, but when knowledge is not paired with action, it is an invitation for disaster. A proactive approach to cybersecurity rooted in awareness, preparation, and avoiding high-risk situations is key to securing your estate—and your legacy—in a digital world.

  1. Jeffrey Gottfried, Eugenie Park, & Monica Anderson, Online Scams and Attacks in America Today, Pew Rsch. Ctr. (July 31, 2025), https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/07/31/online-scams-and-attacks-in-america-today. ↩︎
  2. New FTC Data Show a Big Jump in Reported Losses to Fraud to $12.5 Billion in 2024, Fed. Trade Comm’n (Mar. 10, 2025), https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/03/new-ftc-data-show-big-jump-reported-losses-fraud-125-billion-2024. ↩︎
  3. Jack Caporal, Identity Theft and Credit Card Fraud Statistics for 2025, MotleyFoolMoney (Aug. 15, 2025), https://www.fool.com/money/research/identity-theft-credit-card-fraud-statistics. ↩︎
  4. Vicky Hyman, When It Comes to Fraud, a Sense of Insecurity and Even Inevitability, Global Survey Shows, Mastercard Cybersecurity (Oct. 6, 2025), https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/news-and-trends/stories/2025/consumer-cybersecurity-survey.html. ↩︎
  5. Press Release, FBI, FBI Releases Annual Internet Crime Report (Apr. 23, 2025), https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-annual-internet-crime-report. ↩︎
  6. Henry Rinder, Fraud Targeting the Elderly and Estates: A Growing Concern, NJCPA (Sept. 23, 2024), https://www.njcpa.org/stayinformed/news/blog/post/njcpa-focus/2024/09/23/fraud-targeting-the-elderly-and-estates–a-growing-concern.
    ↩︎
  7. Michelle Maratto & Sana Hashmat, Unmasking Social Engineering: Protecting Your Wealth from Deceptive Cyber Tactics, J.P. Morgan Wealth Mgmt. (Oct. 1, 2025), https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/cybersecurity/phishing/unmasking-social-engineering-protecting-your-wealth-from-deceptive-cyber-tactics.
    ↩︎
  8. Niamh Ancell, Cybercriminals Capitalize on LA Wildfire Chaos via Fake GoFundMe’s and Crypto Coins, Cybernews (Jan. 17, 2025), https://cybernews.com/cybercrime/cybercriminals-exploit-la-wildfires.
    ↩︎
  9. Brian Fung & Sean Lyngaas, Hackers Are Already Taking Advantage of the CrowdStrike Outage Chaos, CNN Bus. (July 22, 2024), https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/22/tech/hackers-crowdstrike-outage-scams. ↩︎
  10. How to Avoid Imposter Scams, Fed. Trade Comm’m Consumer Advice, https://consumer.ftc.gov/features/how-avoid-imposter-scams (last visited Dec. 22, 2025). ↩︎

Be a Part of Your Clients’ Digital Defense Plan

Posted on

Well, that doesn’t seem right. 

It usually starts with something small. A strange email from a bank your client does not recognize. A new credit card account they do not remember opening. A password reset link they never requested. A notice from the IRS that someone has already filed a tax return in their name. 

At first there is confusion. No, there’s no way that’s right. 

Then anxiety sets in. Am I being scammed? 

After that, there may be hours or days spent on the phone with banks, credit bureaus, and government agencies to reach an unsettling conclusion: Someone has my information and is pretending to be me. 

Next comes anger, frustration, and a sense of violation. How could this happen?

Acceptance eventually sets in, along with a determination to never let scammers get the upper hand again. But sometimes it is too late. The damage has been done—to finances, reputation, peace of mind, and, sometimes, legacy. 

Preventing cybercrimes such as identity theft starts with awareness, including the recognition that cybersecurity is not just an IT problem anymore. It is a wealth preservation issue that can affect someone’s legacy even after they are gone. And for advisors, that awareness plays a central role in strengthening clients’ digital defenses long before their estates ever reach administration. 

Scammers routinely target estates, executors, and grieving families, often by mining obituaries and public probate records to launch phishing, impersonation, and identity-theft schemes.

Growing Cyberthreats Can Affect Estate Planning

Consider having “the talk” with clients about cryptocurrencies and their digital estate plan if they have one. However, that talk is incomplete if it fails to cover the growing risks that their digital assets—and legacy—face from cybercriminals.

  • Seventy-three percent of US adults have experienced some form of online scam or cyberattack. Most report weekly scam calls, text, and emails.1 
  • Americans reported 2.6 million fraud cases and 1.1 million identity-theft incidents to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2024. Losses exceeded $12.5 billion, a 25 percent increase over the prior year.2
  • Identity theft is now one of the most common types of consumer fraud, with nearly 750,000 cases in the first half of 2025 alone.3 
  • Seventy-six percent of consumers say they feel more anxious about cybersecurity today than they did two years ago, driven by impersonation enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) and increasingly sophisticated scams.4

Cybercriminals now use AI-generated voice clones to impersonate loved ones, breached financial and medical data to answer security questions, and automated scraping of public records to target people with unnerving precision. Nearly everyone will be targeted at some point if they have not already been. Even if your clients avoid direct harm during their lifetime, their estate and heirs may be more vulnerable after their death.

Why Estates Can Be Vulnerable to Cybercriminals

Older adults are particularly vulnerable to online scams and fraud due to their lower digital literacy and higher accumulated wealth. The FBI reports that in 2024, Americans over the age of 60 were the most frequently targeted group and lost the most money.5

Fraud schemes targeting the estates of people who have passed away are another area of growing cybercrime concern.6 As with older adults, estates, particularly those of seniors, are often perceived as holding substantial assets. The individuals and property involved with estate administration can also create unique vulnerabilities that attract cybercriminals. 

  • The decedent’s loved ones are often overwhelmed and distracted, making them more susceptible to realistic-sounding scams. Cybercriminals use times of chaos, confusion, and heightened emotion to their advantage, preying on feelings such as fear, urgency, and trust during times when people might let their guard down. 
  • Executors may be unfamiliar with digital security, making phishing attempts more successful.
  • Multiple parties (attorneys, advisors, banks, beneficiaries) are exchanging sensitive documents during estate administration, sometimes through unsecured or informal methods.
  • The decedent’s dormant accounts are often easy entry points for identity theft because they often go unmonitored, rely on outdated passwords, and may be tied to personal information that criminals can exploit before anyone realizes there is a problem.
  • Scammers routinely impersonate banks, government agencies, attorneys, or even the executor.
  • Probate is public, giving criminals a ready-made list of heirs, contact information, and sometimes asset details.

Social engineering attacks—scams that use deception rather than technical hacking—that rely on sophisticated cybertools such as AI to exploit basic human psychology and manipulate people are on the rise.7 And just as cybercriminals capitalize on natural disasters8 and tech outages,9 the estate administration process is a scenario that could provide the perfect opening for fraud and deception. 

A Digital Defense Plan for Advisors and Their Clients

Clients count on advisors to help safeguard their wealth. In today’s digital world, that includes protecting against cyberrisks that can compromise traditional and digital assets. Advisors can meaningfully reduce exposure by addressing the most common vulnerabilities before and during estate administration.

Issue: Email is the weakest link. Most cyberattacks begin with email.

  • Advisor action: Encourage strong passwords, multifactor authentication (MFA), and encrypted document-sharing platforms. Advise against sending sensitive materials unprotected and urge your clients to encourage their executors to follow the same security practices when administering the estate.

Issue: Executors cannot secure what they cannot see. Unknown or dormant accounts remain open and unmonitored, making them prime targets for takeover and identity theft.

  • Advisor action: Help clients build a detailed inventory of important digital accounts and storage locations. Instead of collecting credentials yourself, have your clients ensure that their fiduciaries know what accounts must be closed, monitored, or secured. 

Issue: Sensitive legal and tax documents are insecurely stored or shared. Wills, statements, and tax documents often sit unprotected in inboxes or cloud folders.

  • Advisor action: Encourage secure online storage using encrypted folders or password-protected vaults, and ensure that fiduciaries know where to find documents and how to access them.

Issue: Executors may not be prepared for digital threats. Phishing attempts surge during estate administration, and many executors are unfamiliar with digital-security practices.

  • Advisor action: Suggest naming a tech-literate executor (or coexecutor) who is comfortable managing digital accounts and security protocols. Have clients provide a brief “executor security checklist” that outlines verification steps (such as confirming account ownership and access authority) and highlights common red flags such as urgent payment requests, unexpected account changes, or requests for credentials.

Issue: Probate exposes personal information. Public probate court filings often disclose the names and contact information of executors and beneficiaries and may even include a list of assets with their values—information that scammers can easily weaponize.

  • Advisor action: Encourage your clients to meet with their estate planning attorney to discuss whether trust-based planning or other probate-avoidance tools can reduce public exposure and limit targeted fraud.

Issue: Heirs and beneficiaries are prime targets for impersonation scams. Criminals impersonate banks, attorneys, courts, or even the executor to solicit money or sensitive data. For example, a scammer may send an email posing as the estate’s bank or attorney, claiming an urgent problem with an account and requesting immediate payment or login credentials from a beneficiary or executor.

  • Advisor action: Encourage clients and prospects to educate executors and beneficiaries about common scams10 and establish a simple verification process for unexpected requests.

Issue: Identity theft of the deceased is common. Criminals use a decedent’s information to open credit accounts, redirect mail, or file fraudulent tax returns.

  • Advisor action: Provide clients with a postdeath digital checklist: notify credit bureaus, freeze credit files, and close unused accounts promptly.

Issue: Families may not know what “normal” looks like. Executors and heirs sometimes cannot distinguish legitimate communications from sophisticated scams.

  • Advisor action: Become engaged early in the process. Encourage fiduciaries and heirs to verify all unexpected communications with you or the estate’s attorney before acting.

The Best Defense Is a Good Office Visit

“The best defense is a good offense” is a truism in sports, the military, and the business world. Advisors and clients cannot confront online fraudsters in their digital hideouts, but they can take a proactive approach to cybersecurity rooted in awareness, preparation, and avoiding high-risk situations. 

Schedule a time to talk with your clients about their digital defense plan and how you—and we—can be part of the solution.

  1. Jeffrey Gottfried, Eugenie Park, & Monica Anderson, Online Scams and Attacks in America Today, Pew Rsch. Ctr. (July 31, 2025), https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/07/31/online-scams-and-attacks-in-america-today. ↩︎
  2. New FTC Data Show a Big Jump in Reported Losses to Fraud to $12.5 Billion in 2024, Fed. Trade Comm’n (Mar. 10, 2025), https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/03/new-ftc-data-show-big-jump-reported-losses-fraud-125-billion-2024. ↩︎
  3. Jack Caporal, Identity Theft and Credit Card Fraud Statistics for 2025, MotleyFoolMoney (Aug. 15, 2025), https://www.fool.com/money/research/identity-theft-credit-card-fraud-statistics. ↩︎
  4. Vicky Hyman, When It Comes to Fraud, a Sense of Insecurity and Even Inevitability, Global Survey Shows, Mastercard Cybersecurity (Oct. 6, 2025), https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/news-and-trends/stories/2025/consumer-cybersecurity-survey.html.
    ↩︎
  5. Press Release, FBI, FBI Releases Annual Internet Crime Report (Apr. 23, 2025), https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-annual-internet-crime-report. ↩︎
  6. Henry Rinder, Fraud Targeting the Elderly and Estates: A Growing Concern, NJCPA (Sept. 23, 2024), https://www.njcpa.org/stayinformed/news/blog/post/njcpa-focus/2024/09/23/fraud-targeting-the-elderly-and-estates–a-growing-concern. ↩︎
  7. Michelle Maratto & Sana Hashmat, Unmasking Social Engineering: Protecting Your Wealth from Deceptive Cyber Tactics, J.P. Morgan Wealth Mgmt. (Oct. 1, 2025), https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/cybersecurity/phishing/unmasking-social-engineering-protecting-your-wealth-from-deceptive-cyber-tactics. ↩︎
  8. Niamh Ancell, Cybercriminals Capitalize on LA Wildfire Chaos via Fake GoFundMe’s and Crypto Coins, Cybernews (Jan. 17, 2025), https://cybernews.com/cybercrime/cybercriminals-exploit-la-wildfires. ↩︎
  9. Brian Fung & Sean Lyngaas, Hackers Are Already Taking Advantage of the CrowdStrike Outage Chaos, CNN Bus. (July 22, 2024), https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/22/tech/hackers-crowdstrike-outage-scams. ↩︎
  10. How to Avoid Imposter Scams, Fed. Trade Comm’n Consumer Advice, https://consumer.ftc.gov/features/how-avoid-imposter-scams (last visited Dec. 22, 2025). ↩︎

Stress Test Your Estate Plan

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Creating an estate plan is a huge accomplishment. However, your work is not done when the documents have been signed. You must still ensure that the chosen strategy gives you peace of mind and protects the legacy you have worked so hard to build.

An estate plan is not static; it is a living tool that should evolve with the changes in your life. Over time, your family circumstances, financial picture, and estate planning goals will likely shift. Whether through new births or children getting older; career or business developments; or changes to your investments, health, or where you live, countless factors can affect your evolving estate planning goals. External factors, such as new tax legislation or emerging financial instruments, could also throw your plan off track or open the door to new planning opportunities.

You do not need to spend countless hours worrying about your estate plan. Just ask yourself these nine simple questions to stress test your plan and determine whether it is time for an update.

1. When did you last update your will or living trust? In most cases, reviewing an estate plan every three to five years is sufficient, but if a major life change happens sooner, it is a good idea to take another look immediately. The more time that has passed, the more likely there have also been changes in the law that could affect how your plan works.

2. Whom have you named as executor and trustee? Are the people you chose to wind down your affairs still the right fit? Sometimes people choose a loved one out of obligation, even if that person may not be the best at managing money or handling difficult situations. Ask yourself: Is the person I chose still willing and able to handle this responsibility? Am I confident that they understand my values and will act in a way that reflects my wishes?

3. Do you have adequate life insurance? Life insurance is an effective way to provide for yourself (depending on the type of policy) and your loved ones after your death. But instead of just purchasing any policy, it is important to ensure that you have the right kind of insurance (for example, term, whole, or universal) and the right amount of coverage for your needs. For each of your policies, regularly review and update your beneficiary designations. Each policy should name both a primary beneficiary who is first in line to receive the proceeds when you pass and a contingent (backup) beneficiary, in case the primary beneficiary cannot inherit the proceeds. If you have a trust-based estate plan, your attorney may have recommended naming your trust as a primary or contingent beneficiary. This strategy allows the proceeds to flow directly into your trust, which can be managed and distributed according to your wishes. Regularly reviewing your beneficiary designations ensures that your life insurance policies will pass smoothly and according to your wishes, protecting your loved ones from delays, confusion, or unintended outcomes.

4. Which of your accounts or pieces of real property are jointly owned with someone other than your spouse? Jointly owned property can sometimes cause unexpected tax issues. Look at your real property records and seek advice from a professional to ensure your accounts and property are titled in the most tax-efficient way while still carrying out your planning objectives.

5. How is your recordkeeping? Good recordkeeping will make your loved ones’ job much easier if they need to step in for you while you are alive but unable to manage your own health or finances, or when the time comes to wind down your affairs after your death. Do you have an up-to-date list of all your bank and investment accounts, employee benefits, retirement plans, online passwords, and key legal documents in one safe place? If not, now is a good time to create one. Having this information organized, accessible, and secure helps ensure that your loved ones can step in smoothly without unnecessary stress or delay.

6. Has your health or the health of a loved one changed? If you or someone close to you has been diagnosed with a serious illness, it is important to review your estate plan to ensure that it reflects your current circumstances. You may want to update your healthcare and financial powers of attorney to ensure that your decisions will be managed by someone you trust who understands your wishes. You may also consider revisiting your living will, trust provisions, or long-term care planning to ensure your plan provides the right protection and support for yourself and your family.

7. Have you experienced a major financial change? Your estate plan should always reflect your current financial picture. If you have received an inheritance, come into a large sum of money, sold or purchased significant assets, or made new investments, reviewing and updating your estate plan is important. Such changes can affect tax exposure, distribution goals, and even beneficiary designations. Keeping your plan aligned with your financial reality ensures that your wealth is protected and passes according to your intentions.

8. Do you have a plan for your digital life? In today’s world, so much of our personal and financial life exists online, yet many overlook these assets in their estate plans. Digital assets include cryptocurrency, online accounts, social media profiles, email, cloud storage, and even monetized platforms or websites. A thoughtful plan should identify these assets, authorize who can access them, and provide clear instructions on managing or transferring them. Without proper planning, valuable or sentimental digital property can be lost, locked, or mishandled. Including your digital life in your estate plan ensures that your online presence and assets are protected and passed on according to your wishes.

9. When did you last give your plan a thorough once-over? Even if nothing major has happened, we recommend having your plan reviewed by an experienced estate planning attorney every three to five years. This precaution can help you catch small issues before they become big problems. If any of these questions made you pause, it might be time to review your plan. We are here to help you get the peace of mind that comes from knowing that you and your loved ones are protected. Please call us to schedule an appointment to review your estate plan.

Incorporating Crypto into the Estate Planning Conversation

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In 2013, British IT worker James Howells accidentally threw away a hard drive while cleaning his house. Only later did he realize that it held the private key to 8,000 Bitcoin that are now worth hundreds of millions of dollars.1

For more than a decade, he has tried unsuccessfully to persuade local officials to let him dig up the landfill where he believes the drive lies buried, even offering to buy the landfill, to no avail. 

His desperation illustrates not just the meteoric rise of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies but also a fundamental aspect of what sets these assets apart. Without the private key, the Bitcoin is gone forever. There is no password reset and no recovery mechanism.

Crypto is the only asset class where a simple loss of access, not market decline, can wipe out an entire fortune. And that risk does not disappear when a client dies. If an executor cannot locate the wallet, seed phrase, or authentication steps, the asset may as well not exist.

Advisors can learn a lesson from Howells and the lengths to which he is willing to go to recover his lost drive: Clients who own crypto need an estate plan that accounts for how uniquely valuable—and fragile—these assets can be. 

Who Owns Crypto?

When Howells first mined his Bitcoin, cryptocurrency was known mostly within tech circles. Since 2013, however, the value on the drive he inadvertently discarded has exploded from around $9 million to nearly $923 million,2 tracking the dramatic rise of crypto into a widely held asset. Indeed, many experts and reports consider 2025 the year that crypto went mainstream.3 

No longer a niche experiment, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are now widely viewed as “digital gold” and, often, a hedge against traditional assets. Bitcoin alone has a market capitalization near $2 trillion, making it one of the world’s largest assets, ranked ahead of major global companies.4

Despite its volatility, Bitcoin’s long-term performance has been extraordinary. Ten-year returns exceed 26,000 percent, far outpacing the S&P 500, gold, oil, and US Treasury bonds.5 A modest $100 in Bitcoin in 2014 would have been worth nearly $27,000 in 2024.6 

Gains such as these explain why Howells is still willing to unearth tons of garbage—and why crypto has attracted millions of investors. What was once a fringe experiment has moved firmly into the financial mainstream, though estimates of how many Americans hold cryptocurrency vary widely.

  • A June 2025 Gallup survey found that 14 percent of all US adults own Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency, rising to nearly 25 percent for men ages 18–49.7
  • A Security.org study places total US crypto ownership much higher, at 28 percent (about 65 million adults).8
  • Federal Reserve estimates come in far lower, at around 4.3 percent.9

Interestingly, Federal Reserve data also shows that only 2–3 percent of US consumers use cryptocurrency for everyday purchases or money transfers.10 This suggests that most owners view crypto primarily as a long-term rather than a short-term play and supports the crypto community mantra “HODL” (“hold on for dear life”).

This growing level of adoption has also fueled a strong sense of confidence among crypto proponents. As Howells wrote on X in August 2025: “You can block the gates. You can pack the courts. But you cannot block the blockchain. Crypto has already won.”11 A blockchain is a shared digital record book stored across many computers that securely tracks transactions and cannot easily be changed or erased. In essence, Howells is expressing his belief that cryptocurrency is too decentralized to be stopped by traditional power structures like governments, courts, or regulators.

That confidence, however, exists alongside a far less predictable market reality, and opinions on it can vary as much as its price fluctuations. One could argue that the early adopters are the biggest winners: Bitcoin hit a record high in late 2025. But six weeks later, all its gains for the year had been erased,12 giving credence to the crypto naysayers. 

However, more former critics are coming around as institutional investors, financial advisors, and Main Street buyers push crypto further into respectability.13 Kevin O’Leary, Shark Tank’s “Mr. Wonderful,” once called Bitcoin “garbage” (before he flipped from crypto skeptic to investor).14 

Having the Crypto “Talk” with Clients

Crypto is unique, in part, because it presents more than one way to lose big. Market volatility is one risk. But with cryptocurrency, a simple oversight (like Howells’s) can erase a client’s holdings. 

Every Bitcoin transaction requires a private key, or an encrypted string proving ownership of the crypto funds held in a particular wallet. Coinbase likens it to a “password that unlocks the virtual vault that holds our money.”15

In Howells’s case, that safeguard became the problem: The missing hard drive contains a record of the private key. Without it, he cannot access his Bitcoin.

Herein lies the heart of the issue for professionals who advise crypto owners: Access must be identified, documented, and shared with the right people ahead of time. There is no mechanism—not through the courts, not through custodians, not through the blockchain—for an executor or other digital fiduciary to recover a lost private key.

Decentralization is what makes crypto appealing to many investors. It is also why proactive planning is essential to preserve this digital asset. Crypto may be the future of money. However, unless clients address access and other unique crypto issues while they are alive, their crypto wealth could be impossible to preserve, manage, or transfer after their passing. 

How to Hold on for Dear Life: An Action Plan for Advisors with Crypto-Owning Clients

Whether your client is a longtime “HODLer” or a recent crypto investor, failing to plan for access can lead to catastrophic and irreversible loss. Advisors can help by flagging a few core issues early and pairing them with clear next steps.

Issue: Clients may not disclose crypto unless asked

  • Advisor action: Add a simple question to annual reviews: “Do you hold any cryptocurrency or digital tokens?” Many clients do not think to mention small or experimental holdings unless prompted.

Issue: Crypto holdings are often scattered and poorly organized

  • Advisor action: Help clients create a cryptocurrency inventory of wallet types, platforms, and general holdings. Guide them on structure only—do not collect or store private keys or seed phrases for your records.

Issue: Access information is insecurely stored 

  • Advisor action: Encourage secure, redundant storage, such as with a digital password manager, online encrypted vault, or real-life fireproof safe. Clients should also document where access information is kept (without sharing the information itself) so estate fiduciaries can find it when the time comes.

Issue: Executors may lack the technical ability to manage crypto

  • Advisor action: Recommend selecting a tech-literate executor or naming a digital executor who is comfortable managing digital accounts and security protocols. Suggest that they include with their estate planning documents a brief “executor security checklist” that outlines verification steps (such as confirming account ownership and access authority) and highlights common red flags such as urgent payment requests, unexpected account changes, or requests for credentials.

Issue: Estate documents may not explicitly address crypto

  • Advisor action: Coordinate with the client’s estate planning attorney to ensure that wills and trusts authorize fiduciaries to access, manage, and transfer crypto under applicable state law.

Issue: Crypto tax considerations

  • Advisor action: Inform clients that crypto is treated by the IRS as property, not currency, under existing guidance. Executors selling or transferring assets may trigger capital gains. Encourage clients to maintain transaction records and involve tax professionals.

Issue: Advisors must avoid mishandling sensitive data

  • Advisor action: Set boundaries. Advisors should never receive or store private keys or wallet credentials. Instead, provide high-level guidance on secure storage options while keeping sensitive data solely with the client or authorized fiduciary and ensuring that any applicable ethical, professional, or regulatory compliance requirements you may be subject to are fully understood and followed.

Issue: Crypto can create liquidity challenges for estates

  • Advisor action: Discuss the client’s preferences for holding, liquidating, or transferring crypto at death. Clarifying intentions helps fiduciaries avoid rushed decisions in volatile markets.

Secure the Wallet, Secure the Legacy

Whether your clients hold crypto as a diversification asset, view decentralized digital currencies as the future of money, or fall somewhere in between, ensure that your guidance goes beyond investing strategy and addresses how crypto fits into their estate plan. Thoughtful estate planning can help preserve access, reduce confusion, and protect the value of their crypto for the people they intend to benefit.

  1. Ryan Gladwin, Man Fails to Buy Landfill with His Lost $923M Bitcoin—Here’s His New Plan, Yahoo!Finance (Aug. 5, 2025), https://finance.yahoo.com/news/man-fails-buy-landfill-lost-100824532.html. ↩︎
  2.  Id. ↩︎
  3. Daren Matsuoka et al., State of Crypto 2025: The Year Crypto Went Mainstream, a16zcryto (Oct. 22, 2025), https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/state-of-crypto-report-2025.
    ↩︎
  4. DeepNewz, Bitcoin Surpasses Google with Over $2 Trillion Market Cap, Becomes Sixth Largest Asset Globally, The Defiant (May 19, 2025), https://thedefiant.io/news/markets/bitcoin-surpasses-google-over-2-trillion-market-cap-becomes-sixth-largest-asset-77ec71e0. ↩︎
  5. Prem Reginald, Bitcoin Outperformed Traditional Assets by Over 26,000% in the Last Decade, CoinGecko (Dec. 13, 2024), https://www.coingecko.com/research/publications/bitcoin-versus-traditional-assets-price-returns. ↩︎
  6. Id. ↩︎
  7. Jeffrey M. Jones & Lydia Saad, Cryptocurrency Still Has Limited Main Street Appeal, Gallup (July 22, 2025), https://news.gallup.com/poll/692777/cryptocurrency-limited-main-street-appeal.aspx. ↩︎
  8. Brett Cruz, 2025 Cryptocurrency Adoption and Consumer Sentiment Report, Security (Nov. 21, 2025), https://www.security.org/digital-security/cryptocurrency-annual-consumer-report.
    ↩︎
  9. Juan M. Sánchez & Masataka Mori, Cryptocurrency Ownership Among U.S. Households, Fed. Rsrv. Bank of St. Louis (Mar. 11, 2025), https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2025/mar/cryptocurrency-ownership-us-households.
    ↩︎
  10. Fumiko Hayashi & Aditi Routh, U.S. Consumers’ Use of Cryptocurrency for Payments, Fed. Rsrv. Bank of Kansas City (Sept. 24, 2025) https://www.kansascityfed.org/research/payments-system-research-briefings/us-consumers-use-of-cryptocurrency-for-payments. ↩︎
  11. James Howells (@howelzy), X (Aug. 4, 2025, at 10:59 CT), https://x.com/howelzy/status/1952399001346527334. ↩︎
  12. John Towfighi, Why Crypto Is Melting Down and Stocks Keep Falling, CNN Bus. (Nov. 18, 2025), https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/18/business/bitcoin-price-crypto-stocks.
    ↩︎
  13. Alexey Bondarev, 10 of the Harshest Bitcoin Critics Who Flipped to Become Frantic Crypto Believers, Yellow (Jan. 4, 2025), https://yellow.com/en-US/news/10-of-the-harshest-bitcoin-critics-who-flipped-to-become-frantic-crypto-believers. ↩︎
  14. Kevin Helms, Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary Reverses Stance on Bitcoin, Says Crypto Is Here to Stay, Invests 3% of His Portfolio, Bitcoin (Feb. 28, 2021), https://news.bitcoin.com/shark-tanks-kevin-oleary-bitcoin-cryptocurrencies-here-to-stay-invests-portfolio.
    ↩︎
  15. What Is a Private Key? Coinbase, https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-basics/what-is-a-private-key (last visited Dec. 22, 2025). ↩︎

Secure Your Digital Wallet: Cryptocurrency and Your Estate Plan

Posted on

In 2013, British IT worker James Howells accidentally threw away a hard drive while cleaning his house. Only later did he realize that it held the private key to 8,000 Bitcoin that are now worth hundreds of millions of dollars.1

For more than a decade, he has tried unsuccessfully to persuade local officials to let him dig up the landfill where he believes the drive lies buried, even offering to buy the landfill, to no avail. 

His desperation illustrates not just the meteoric rise of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies but also a fundamental aspect of what sets these assets apart: Without the private key, the Bitcoin is gone forever. There is no password reset and no recovery mechanism.

Crypto is the only asset class where a simple loss of access, not market decline, can wipe out an entire fortune. And that risk does not disappear when you die. If your executor cannot locate the wallet, seed phrase, or authentication steps, the asset may as well not exist.

Howells learned the hard way a lesson for crypto-owning clients: You need an estate plan that accounts for how uniquely valuable—and fragile—these assets can be. 

Crypto Goes Mainstream

When Howells first mined his Bitcoin, cryptocurrency was known mostly within tech circles. Since 2013, however, the value on the drive he inadvertently discarded has exploded from around $9 million to nearly $923 million,2 tracking the dramatic rise of crypto into a widely held asset. Indeed, many experts and reports consider 2025 the year that crypto went mainstream.3 

No longer a niche experiment, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are now widely viewed as “digital gold” and, often, a hedge against traditional assets. Bitcoin alone has a market capitalization near $2 trillion, making it one of the world’s largest assets, ranked ahead of major global companies.4

Despite volatility, Bitcoin’s long-term performance has been extraordinary. Ten-year returns exceed 26,000 percent, far outpacing the S&P 500, gold, oil, and US Treasury bonds.5 A modest $100 in Bitcoin in 2014 would have been worth nearly $27,000 in 2024.6 

Gains such as these explain why Howells is still willing to unearth tons of garbage—and why crypto has attracted millions of investors. What was once a fringe experiment has moved firmly into the financial mainstream, though estimates of how many Americans hold cryptocurrency vary widely.

  • A June 2025 Gallup survey found that 14 percent of US adults across all age groups own Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency, rising to nearly 25 percent for men ages 18–49.7
  • A Security.org study places total US crypto ownership much higher, at 28 percent across all age groups (about 65 million adults).8
  • Federal Reserve estimates come in far lower, at around 4.3 percent.9

Interestingly, Federal Reserve data also shows that only 2–3 percent of US consumers use cryptocurrency for everyday purchases or money transfers.10 This suggests that most owners view crypto primarily as a long-term rather than a short-term play and supports the crypto community mantra “HODL” (“hold on for dear life”).

This growing level of adoption has also fueled a strong sense of confidence among crypto proponents. As Howells posted on X in August 2025: “You can block the gates. You can pack the courts. But you cannot block the blockchain. Crypto has already won.”11 A blockchain is a shared digital record book stored across many computers that securely tracks transactions and cannot easily be changed or erased. In essence, Howells is expressing his belief that cryptocurrency is too decentralized to be stopped by traditional power structures like governments, courts, or regulators.

That confidence, however, exists alongside a far less predictable market reality, and opinions on it can vary as much as its price fluctuations. One could argue that early adopters like Howells are the biggest winners: Bitcoin hit a record high in late 2025. But six weeks later, all its gains for the year had been erased,12 giving credence to the crypto naysayers. 

However, more former critics are coming around as institutional investors, financial advisors, and Main Street buyers push crypto further into respectability.13 Kevin O’Leary, Shark Tank’s “Mr. Wonderful,” once called Bitcoin “garbage” (before he flipped from crypto skeptic to investor).14 

From Speculation to Protection: What Sets Crypto Apart

Part of what makes crypto a unique asset is that it presents more than one way to lose big. Market volatility is a risk with every asset, and cryptocurrency is certainly no exception. However, unlike a brokerage or banking account, with cryptocurrency, a simple oversight (like Howells’s) can erase all your holdings. 

Every Bitcoin transaction requires a private key or an encrypted string proving ownership of the crypto funds held in a particular wallet. Coinbase likens it to a “password that unlocks the virtual vault that holds your money.”15 In Howells’s case, that safeguard became the problem: The missing hard drive contains a record of the private key. Without it, he cannot access his Bitcoin. 

Therein lies the heart of the estate planning issue for crypto owners: Access must be identified, documented, and shared with the right people ahead of time. There is no mechanism—not through the courts, not through custodians, not through the blockchain—for an executor or other digital fiduciary to recover a lost private key.

Decentralization is what makes crypto appealing to many investors. It is also why proactive planning is essential to preserve this digital asset. Crypto may be the future of money. However, unless you address access and other unique crypto issues while you are alive, your crypto holdings could be impossible to preserve, manage, or transfer after your passing. 

How to Hold on for Dear Life: A Crypto Preservation Plan

Whether you are a longtime “HODLer” or a recent crypto investor, not having a plan to access and preserve your funds can lead to catastrophic, irreversible loss. Below are core crypto issues that your digital estate plan should cover to keep your funds safe and shareable. 

Issue: Keeping your crypto accessible. Crypto has no password reset, no customer service line, and no central authority to recover lost assets. If your heirs or executors cannot locate your wallets, keys, or access steps, or if your estate plan documents do not authorize access, your crypto may be permanently unrecoverable.

What you can do:

  • Create a secure detailed inventory of your wallets, platforms, and holdings. Keep it somewhere safe and encrypted.
  • Appoint a tech-savvy executor or a digital executor and update your will or trust to specifically reference crypto and grant access rights under state law.
  • Store private keys, seed phrases, and multifactor authentication (MFA) backup codes securely. Let a trusted person know where these instructions are kept in case of an emergency.

Issue: Keeping your crypto safe. Crypto is vulnerable to hacking, phishing, and fraud, both during life and after death. Weak cybersecurity, insecure storage, or missing documentation can put your assets and estate at risk and create tax complications for your heirs (for example, difficulty establishing cost basis, reporting taxable gains, or responding to inquiries by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)).

What you can do:

  • Use a reputable password manager and enable MFA for all crypto-related accounts. Never list passwords or private keys in your will. Create a separate secure method for your trusted agents or executors to access your accounts.
  • Back up recovery codes, wallet instructions, and key documentation in an encrypted, nonpublic location to prevent loss from device failure or theft.
  • Keep thorough transaction records and understand the tax rules. Under existing guidance, the IRS treats crypto as property—not currency—meaning that transfers, exchanges, and sales may trigger capital-gains taxes; lifetime transfers may require gift-tax reporting; and valuable crypto holdings may increase your taxable estate.

Secure Your Wallet, Secure Your Legacy

Whether you hold crypto as a diversification asset, view decentralized digital currencies as the future of money, or fall somewhere in between, ensure that your crypto accounting goes beyond investment strategy and includes estate plan considerations. Thoughtful estate planning can help preserve access, reduce confusion, and protect the value of your crypto for the people you intend to benefit.

  1. Ryan Gladwin, Man Fails to Buy Landfill with His Lost $923M Bitcoin—Here’s His New Plan, Yahoo!Finance (Aug. 5, 2025), https://finance.yahoo.com/news/man-fails-buy-landfill-lost-100824532.html. ↩︎
  2. Id. ↩︎
  3. Daren Matsuoka et al., State of Crypto 2025: The Year Crypto Went Mainstream, a16zcryto (Oct. 22, 2025), https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/state-of-crypto-report-2025. ↩︎
  4. DeepNewz, Bitcoin Surpasses Google with Over $2 Trillion Market Cap, Becomes Sixth Largest Asset Globally, The Defiant (May 19, 2025), https://thedefiant.io/news/markets/bitcoin-surpasses-google-over-2-trillion-market-cap-becomes-sixth-largest-asset-77ec71e0. ↩︎
  5. Prem Reginald, Bitcoin Outperformed Traditional Assets by Over 26,000% in the Last Decade, CoinGecko (Dec. 13, 2024), https://www.coingecko.com/research/publications/bitcoin-versus-traditional-assets-price-returns. ↩︎
  6. Id. ↩︎
  7. Jeffrey M. Jones & Lydia Saad, Cryptocurrency Still Has Limited Main Street Appeal, Gallup (July 22, 2025), https://news.gallup.com/poll/692777/cryptocurrency-limited-main-street-appeal.aspx. ↩︎
  8. Brett Cruz, 2025 Cryptocurrency Adoption and Consumer Sentiment Report, Security (Nov. 21, 2025), https://www.security.org/digital-security/cryptocurrency-annual-consumer-report. ↩︎
  9. Juan M. Sánchez & Masataka Mori, Cryptocurrency Ownership Among U.S. Households, Fed. Rsrv. Bank of St. Louis (Mar. 11, 2025), https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2025/mar/cryptocurrency-ownership-us-households. ↩︎
  10. Fumiko Hayashi & Aditi Routh, U.S. Consumers’ Use of Cryptocurrency for Payments, Fed. Rsrv. Bank of Kansas City (Sept. 24, 2025) https://www.kansascityfed.org/research/payments-system-research-briefings/us-consumers-use-of-cryptocurrency-for-payments. ↩︎
  11. James Howells (@howelzy), X (Aug. 4, 2025, at 10:59 CT), https://x.com/howelzy/status/1952399001346527334. ↩︎
  12. John Towfighi, Why Crypto Is Melting Down and Stocks Keep Falling, CNN Bus. (Nov. 18, 2025), https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/18/business/bitcoin-price-crypto-stocks. ↩︎
  13. Alexey Bondarev, 10 of the Harshest Bitcoin Critics Who Flipped to Become Frantic Crypto Believers, Yellow (Jan. 4, 2025), https://yellow.com/en-US/news/10-of-the-harshest-bitcoin-critics-who-flipped-to-become-frantic-crypto-believers. ↩︎
  14. Kevin Helms, Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary Reverses Stance on Bitcoin, Says Crypto Is Here to Stay, Invests 3% of His Portfolio, Bitcoin (Feb. 28, 2021), (https://news.bitcoin.com/shark-tanks-kevin-oleary-bitcoin-cryptocurrencies-here-to-stay-invests-portfolio. ↩︎
  15. What Is a Private Key? Coinbase, https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-basics/what-is-a-private-key (last visited Dec. 22, 2025). ↩︎

Do Not Let Your Digital Life Die with You

Posted on

Today, so much of what once existed in material form now lives entirely online. Our photos, finances, business operations, and even our identities are stored on devices and platforms and in cloud accounts. Without proper planning, these valuable digital assets can easily be lost or become inaccessible after we die.

As a sign of the times and how deeply virtual and physical life have merged, most of us no longer distinguish between assets we can touch and those that exist only online. You cannot put cryptocurrency in your back pocket, but you can move it instantly via the phone that is in your pocket. You cannot walk into your e-commerce store, but it can generate thousands in income each month for you, and that money flows directly into your online accounts where you never physically see a dollar or cent. 

Digital assets are every bit as real and valuable as traditional property—sometimes even more so. Yet many people do not treat them that way in their estate plan. Your plan may account for your home and heirlooms, but what about your Venmo balance, web domains, or crypto wallets?

A Day in the (Digital) Life

Think about how many digital assets you interact with on a daily basis. Your smartphone unlocks to reveal years’ worth of photos, messages, authentication codes, and logins. You can go online to check banking and investment apps, pay bills, move money through PayPal or Venmo, and access cloud storage, subscriptions, rewards programs, and digital wallets. By day’s end, you have used dozens of digital accounts, some holding real monetary value, others containing irreplaceable personal history. Yet most people do not recognize that these items are part of their overall estate.

A recent Bryn Mawr Trust survey found that Americans now place an average value of nearly $200,000 on their digital assets, and 79 percent say that protecting those assets is important—almost identical to the 78 percent who feel that way about traditional financial assets.1 However, only 44 percent of those working with financial advisors say that the topic of digital assets and digital estate planning has ever been raised.2

People also underestimate the size of their digital footprint. Respondents to the same survey reported having anywhere from a handful to approximately 250 digital accounts, and many could not even estimate how many files they have.3

  • Twenty-nine percent say they feel very or somewhat knowledgeable about digital assets.
  • Twenty-one percent say they have only “a little knowledge.”
  • Twenty-seven percent have heard the term digital assets but know almost nothing about it.
  • Fifteen percent have never heard the term.4

If any of these findings hit home for you, you may be facing one of the major conundrums of the digital world: We constantly interact with digital assets but often have no idea what they actually are, let alone how to protect them.

So what exactly counts as a digital asset today?

Defining Digital Assets

Digital assets include any electronically stored pieces of information you own, use, control, or derive value from as well as the accounts, platforms, and devices where that information is stored. They generally fall into several categories:

  • Personal communications and media: emails, text messages, digital photos and videos, social media profiles
  • Creative and intellectual property: blogs, websites, domain names, digital artwork, nonfungible tokens (NFTs)
  • Financial and asset-based accounts: online bank and brokerage accounts, crypto wallets, payment apps
  • Business and commercial digital assets: e-commerce stores, bookkeeping and payroll platforms, monetized social media
  • Subscription and licensed digital property: e-books, digital movies and music, gaming libraries
  • Security and authentication tools: password managers, authenticator apps, encrypted drives
  • Records, data, and personal identity: online statements, tax and medical portals, biometric identifiers
  • Rewards and loyalty programs: airline miles, hotel points, credit card rewards
  • Digital memorabilia and archived content: genealogy accounts, cloud-stored archives
  • Connected devices: smartphones, tablets, computers, smart home devices tied to cloud accounts

Living in our digital world, differentiating between a digital asset and a traditional asset is not as obvious as it might seem. With so much of our lives now online, it is a bit like asking a fish, “What is water?” We are so immersed in digital assets, we almost do not perceive them for what they are: distinct assets that require a distinct protection plan. 

How to Protect Digital Assets in Your Estate Plan

Even if you understand what digital assets are, they can be easy to overlook in your estate plan. Here are some of the most common digital risks and the practical steps you can take to address them. 

Not knowing what digital assets you own. Most people do not realize how much of their life runs through digital channels. Creating a complete digital asset inventory is the first step toward securing your digital legacy. 

What you can do:

  • Walk through a typical day, then a week, then a month.
  • Write down every digital touchpoint: apps, accounts, bills, subscriptions, cloud storage, and financial platforms.
  • Add these items to your digital asset inventory.

Losing access to your own digital accounts (and leaving loved ones locked out later). Without a clear plan, loved ones may never recover important digital property, from payment app balances to cryptocurrency to unused reward points.

What you can do:

  • Go through each account in your digital asset inventory.
  • Store access instructions (not passwords) securely.
  • Let someone you trust know where your inventory and access instructions are stored.

Losing irreplaceable photos, videos, messages, and personal history. If everything lives on one device or inside a locked cloud account, your priceless memories may disappear forever.

What you can do:

  • Designate Apple or Google legacy contacts to allow approved access after death.5
  • Back up important media to a secure shared folder accessible to a spouse or trusted family member or advisor. 
  • Periodically review what is stored only on your phones, computers, tablets, or private accounts and move critical items to a protected backup or shared account.

Executors facing access barriers during estate settlement. Executors need access to your bills, statements, or important online documents but may be blocked without the right authority.

What you can do:

  • Appoint a digital executor (or coexecutor).
  • Tell your executor which accounts they may need to access during administration so they know what to look for and where to begin.
  • Ensure that your will or trust gives them explicit access rights.

Identity theft or fraud after death. Criminals often target the deceased, taking advantage of dormant accounts or publicly available probate information.

What you can do:

  • Maintain an updated digital asset list so your executor knows what to secure or close quickly.
  • Consider using a living trust to avoid probate court after your passing and reduce the public exposure that goes with it.
  • Ensure that your executor (or digital executor) knows how to notify credit bureaus and freeze the credit file immediately after death.

Weak cybersecurity that puts your estate (and loved ones) at risk. Simple mistakes such as weak passwords, no multifactor authentication (MFA), or storing sensitive details in unprotected files create vulnerabilities now and later.

What you can do:

  • Use MFA and a reputable password manager for stronger security.
  • Document your MFA methods (backup codes, authenticator apps) in a secure, nonpublic place so a spouse or other trusted contact can use them in an emergency.
  • Never write passwords in your will. Instead, ensure that your will or trust names a digital executor or trustee and grants them the necessary access rights.

Bring Your Digital Estate into the 21st Century

We are living in a digital world; an estate plan that is not purposefully designed to protect digital assets is incomplete and out of date. 

If your estate plan has not been revisited in the past few years with an eye toward safeguarding your digital legacy, it needs attention. For help bringing your estate plan into the 21st century, schedule a time to talk with us.

  1. Jamie Hopkins, Bryn Mawr Trust Survey Reveals Americans Value Digital Assets at $191,516 on Average, but Gaps Exist in Digital Asset Awareness and Estate Planning, Bryn Mawr Tr. (Dec. 5, 2024), https://www.bmt.com/news-insights-events/bryn-mawr-trust-survey.
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  2. Id. ↩︎
  3. Id. ↩︎
  4. Id. ↩︎
  5. Roger Fingas, Who Handles Your Death Better? Google, Facebook, and Apple Compared, Android Auth. (Jan. 16, 2022), https://www.androidauthority.com/data-after-death-google-facebook-apple-3088700. ↩︎

Help Clients Plan for Their Digital Footprint

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Today, many assets that once existed in material form now live entirely online. Photos, financial accounts, business operations, and even personal identities are stored across devices, platforms, and cloud services. Without clear planning and authority, a client’s digital assets can be difficult or impossible for fiduciaries or heirs to access, creating gaps in an otherwise well-structured estate plan.

Clients no longer distinguish between the assets they can physically touch and the ones that exist only online. A person cannot hold cryptocurrency in their hand, but they can transfer significant value instantly from a mobile wallet. They may never step into their e-commerce business, but it can generate substantial income for them that flows directly into digital accounts. 

Digital assets are every bit as real and valuable as traditional property—sometimes even more so. Yet clients do not always treat them that way in their estate plan. They account for their home and heirlooms, but what about their Venmo balance, web domains, and crypto wallets?

A Day in the (Digital) Life

Think about how many digital assets a typical client interacts with on a daily basis. Their smartphone is filled with years’ worth of photos, messages, authentication codes, and logins. They go online to check banking and investment apps, pay bills, move money through PayPal or Venmo, and access cloud storage, subscriptions, rewards programs, and digital wallets. By day’s end, they have used dozens of digital accounts, some holding real monetary value, others containing irreplaceable personal history. Yet most clients do not recognize these items as part of their overall estate. 

A recent Bryn Mawr Trust survey found that Americans now place an average value of nearly $200,000 on their digital assets, and 79 percent say protecting those assets is important—almost identical to the 78 percent who feel that way about traditional financial assets.1 However, only 44 percent of those working with advisors say the topic of digital assets and digital estate planning has ever been raised.2

People also underestimate the size of their digital footprint. In the same survey, respondents reported having anywhere from a handful to about 250 digital accounts, and many could not even estimate the number of files they have.3

Perhaps most telling for advisors are these responses:

  • Twenty-nine percent of people say they feel very or somewhat knowledgeable about digital assets.
  • Twenty-one percent say they have only “a little knowledge.”
  • Twenty-seven percent have heard the term digital assets but know almost nothing about it.
  • Fifteen percent have never heard the term.4

For advisors, the message is clear: Clients constantly interact with digital assets but often have no idea what those assets actually are, let alone how to protect them.

So what exactly counts as a digital asset today? That may be less clear. 

Defining (and Inventorying) Digital Assets

Clients (and advisors) may mistakenly believe that digital assets begin and end with Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies; in reality, digital assets include any electronically stored piece of information a person owns, uses, controls, or derives value from, along with the accounts, platforms, and devices that store that information. They generally fall into several categories:

  • Personal communications and media: emails, text messages, digital photos and videos, social media profiles
  • Creative and intellectual property: blogs, websites, domain names, digital artwork, nonfungible tokens (NFTs)
  • Financial and asset-based accounts: online bank and brokerage accounts, crypto wallets, payment apps
  • Business and commercial digital assets: e-commerce stores, bookkeeping and payroll platforms, monetized social media
  • Subscription and licensed digital property: e-books, digital movies and music, gaming libraries
  • Security and authentication tools: password managers, authenticator apps, encrypted drives
  • Records, data, and personal identity: online statements, tax and medical portals, biometric identifiers
  • Rewards, memberships, and loyalty programs: airline miles, hotel points, credit card rewards
  • Digital memorabilia and archived content: genealogy accounts, cloud-stored archives
  • Smart devices and connected technology: smartphones, tablets, computers, smart home devices connected to cloud accounts

Most clients are unaware of how much of their life runs through digital channels until someone asks them to think about it. One effective way to start the conversation is to have clients describe a typical day and identify each digital touchpoint. Then expand the exercise: What do they access weekly? What bills autodraft monthly? Which platforms hold financial data, business information, or personal memories?

Writing down these touchpoints transforms abstract digital assets into a concrete inventory. Viewed over a day, a week, or a month, this exercise reveals accounts and information that should be documented, secured, and incorporated into an estate plan. It turns an overwhelming concept into a clear map of a client’s digital estate and lays the groundwork for attorney-guided planning.

Risks, Red Flags, and Advisor Actions

Even when clients understand what digital assets are, many unintentionally leave them out of their estate plan. Advisors can watch for common risks and match each one with a simple planning step.

Risk: Permanent loss of financial value

  • Red flag: Client uses crypto, online-only banks, or payment apps with no documented access plan.
  • Advisor action: Encourage clients to inventory these accounts; securely store private keys, login credentials, and multifactor authentication (MFA) methods such as backup codes and authenticator apps in a reputable online password manager or encrypted vault; and clearly reference these records in their estate plan documents.

Risk: Executors cannot access essential digital accounts

  • Red flag: Client relies heavily on MFA, password managers, or cloud-only statements.
  • Advisor action: Recommend designating a digital executor and ensuring that their estate plan expressly grants that individual digital-access authority in accordance with state law.

Risk: Loss of sentimental or legacy information

  • Red flag: Family photos, videos, or messages exist only on a locked phone or locked cloud service.
  • Advisor action: Suggest that clients designate Apple or Google legacy contacts5 and back up key media in a shared secure location.

Risk: Administrative chaos during estate settlement

  • Red flag: Bills, tax documents, or monthly account or debt statements exist only in online portals no one else can find.
  • Advisor action: During your reviews with clients, walk through their daily, weekly, and monthly routines to identify where essential data is located and have them leave a digital asset list and corresponding login credentials for their executor or digital executor.

Risk: Identity theft or ongoing charges after death

  • Red flag: Dormant accounts, old email addresses, or unused subscriptions remain open.
  • Advisor action: Encourage consolidating or closing outdated accounts and maintaining an updated digital asset list.

Risk: Business disruption for owners and entrepreneurs

  • Red flag: E-commerce, domain, payroll, or customer management platforms are controlled by the client only, with no documented access or business succession plan.
  • Advisor action: Ensure that business owners document critical credentials and incorporate digital continuity into their estate plan, operating or shareholder agreements, and internal governance policies so that authorized fiduciaries can maintain operations, pay employees, and protect customer data during incapacity or after death.

Estate Planning in a Digital World

We are living in a digital world. Advisors and clients cannot overlook digital estate planning, and an estate plan that fails to address digital assets is incomplete and out of date. To bring your client’s plan into the 21st century, schedule time to talk with them (and with us) about protecting their digital legacy.

  1. Jamie Hopkins, Bryn Mawr Trust Survey Reveals Americans Value Digital Assets at $191,516 on Average, but Gaps Exist in Digital Asset Awareness and Estate Planning, Bryn Mawr Tr. (Dec. 5, 2024), https://www.bmt.com/news-insights-events/bryn-mawr-trust-survey. ↩︎
  2. Id. ↩︎
  3. Id. ↩︎
  4. Id. ↩︎
  5. Roger Fingas, Who Handles Your Death Better? Google, Facebook, and Apple Compared, Android Auth. (Jan. 16, 2022), https://www.androidauthority.com/data-after-death-google-facebook-apple-3088700. ↩︎

Whom Should I Tell About My Estate Plan?

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Creating an estate plan is typically a private matter, not something you share in detail with everyone in your life. After all, what you choose to do with your money and property is your business. Your partner might know what is in your plan, especially if you created it together. But beyond that, does anyone else really need to know?

The short answer is yes. There are good reasons for keeping certain aspects of your estate plan to yourself. However, if you keep too many details to yourself—or forget to keep others in the loop—your well-thought-out plan may not work the way you intended.

An estate plan cannot work if it is invisible. If no one knows that your plan exists or if no one can access your documents, it may as well not exist. Verbal promises carry no weight—simply telling someone about your goals and wishes is not enough. Your wishes must be properly documented.

A Tiered Approach to Divulging Your Plans

Keeping an estate plan private makes sense to an extent. That is why people often use a trust-based plan instead of a will-based plan: The latter is subject to the public probate process, and almost anyone can obtain court records of that process and learn details about you, your family, and what you owned at your death.

Within your family, you may keep your estate plan private to avoid drama and hurt feelings over who will play a role in your plan and who will receive your money and property at your death. Or you may worry that if word gets out about your plan, others’ opinions will sway your decisions. You may instead prefer to make rational, unemotional choices, removed from the competing voices of friends and family who stand to inherit.

While you absolutely have the right to keep your estate plan private, doing so is not always in your best interest. The real question then becomes how do you share something so personal without feeling like you are broadcasting it to the world?

The trick is knowing whom to tell what, when to tell them, why to tell them, and how to tell them. “Telling” someone can mean different things, from giving them copies of all your plan documents and keys to your digital vault to letting them know that they are named in the plan and whom to contact later for more details.

You might use a tiered communication approach that aims to put the right information in the right hands at the right time to prevent confusion, avoid family disputes, and create as little stress as possible for your trusted decision-makers and beneficiaries.

Tier One: Trusted Decision-Makers (Full Access)

Who: The people you have legally appointed to act on your behalf, including:

  • your spouse or significant other (especially if you planned together, share joint accounts or property, or live in a community property state, or if you appointed them to one of the roles below, since they may need to act quickly or coordinate with other decision-makers)
  • a personal representative or executor (carries out the terms of your will and oversees the probate process, if one is needed)
  • a trustee and a successor trustee (manages accounts and property that were or will be funded into the trust according to your trust agreement)
  • an agent under a financial power of attorney (handles your finances, either immediately or, in some cases, only if you are unable to manage them)
  • an agent under a medical power of attorney (makes healthcare decisions if you cannot make them or communicate your wishes)
  • a guardian for minor children (provides care for those who rely on you)

What: Enough information to act immediately and effectively, including:

  • the location of your completed estate planning documents (will, trust, powers of attorney, healthcare directives), including where originals are kept and where copies or electronic versions can be found
  • information on how to access these documents if the originals are stored somewhere such as in a safe deposit box or home safe
  • a list of everything you own (including financial accounts, real property, business interests, digital assets)
  • instructions for special property (for example, businesses, firearms, intellectual property, pets)
  • digital storage location and credentials (secure cloud vault, encrypted drive) for any digital assets (emails, business documents, electronic financial accounts)
  • contact information for your estate planning attorney
  • your wishes and goals, including the choices you have made in your plan and how you want your decision-makers to carry out their responsibilities once they step into their role

You may decide that the agents named in your medical power of attorney are less likely to need detailed financial information. However, they should still know where to access your estate planning documents.

When:

  • as soon as possible after you appoint them to the role
  • any time you appoint new decision-makers or change the order in which you have appointed them to serve
  • whenever you move your estate planning documents to store them in a new location
  • periodically, to confirm that they are still willing and able to serve

Why:

  • they cannot do their job if they do not know they have been appointed and how to access what they need
  • delays in knowing or confusion about who is in charge and where your documents are located can cost money, result in unintended property damage, or cause unnecessary family stress and conflict

How:

  • meet in person or via video to explain their role and your goals and desires
  • provide a written “roadmap” with tasks they will need to perform, a list of everything you own, and key contacts (for example, your financial advisor, attorney, accountant, insurance agent, etc.)
  • store digital copies securely and share controlled access with the relevant decision-makers
  • confirm that they accept the role and understand the responsibilities

Tier Two: Primary Beneficiaries (Selective Access and Strategic Sharing)

Who: The individuals or entities you have chosen to inherit from you upon your passing, even if you have not appointed them to any decision-making role, such as:

  • spouse or significant other
  • children, grandchildren, or other relatives
  • friends or nonrelatives
  • charities or nonprofits
  • religious institutions
  • educational institutions

You may also choose to share your plans with loved ones who might expect an inheritance,  especially if you intend to leave them out, provide for them in other ways (for example, as a direct beneficiary of something or by providing funds to them during your lifetime), or give them less than others in similar relation to you. While the conversation may feel uncomfortable, addressing it now can prevent painful surprises later and ease the burden on your decision-makers and loved ones, who would otherwise be left without your explanation.

What:

  • the nature of the gift (money, real estate, investments, personal property)
  • any obligations attached to the inherited item (taxes, upkeep, management, legal restrictions)
  • their right to refuse the gift (disclaim an inheritance), with the caution that the disclaimer must be made before they take ownership or control of the item

When:

  • the sooner the better if the gift is complex, burdensome, or potentially unwanted
  • more flexibility in timing if the gift is straightforward and unlikely to cause issues—but do not wait until it is too late

Why:

  • prevents surprises that can cause stress or resentment
  • allows time for the beneficiary to prepare for upkeep, sale, or management
  • gives you a chance to reallocate gifts that might otherwise be refused

How:

  • communicate in person, by phone, or in writing
  • explain expectations or conditions attached to the gift
  • for sensitive gifts (disinheritance, unequal shares, heirlooms, pets, business interests), consider having the conversation with your attorney present if you feel uncomfortable addressing it on your own or if you want to create a record of the discussion to demonstrate your intent and legal capacity in the event your plan is contested in the future

Failing to plan—and to clearly communicate your wishes—can have the following serious consequences for your estate:

  • Safe deposit lockout. The executor cannot find your original will and believes it may be in your safe deposit box at the bank, but their name is not on the account, forcing a court order to open it.
  • Forgotten password. Digital estate planning documents are stored in the cloud, but the account credentials were never shared, leaving files permanently inaccessible.
  • Disappearing executor or successor trustee. Your named executor or successor trustee moved away years ago, changed phone numbers, and cannot be reached when needed, and you did not appoint a backup.
  • Unwanted gift. You leave your classic car to a loved one who you know will treasure it as you did. However, they do not have the space or resources to maintain it and reluctantly refuse the gift. If you did not name a backup beneficiary, the car passes to your residuary beneficiaries, who may not value or appreciate it.
  • Long-lost co-owner. If a vacation home left to a nephew is actually co-owned with a distant cousin, your nephew is forced into a joint ownership arrangement that leads to years of awkward and expensive disputes.
  • The “final will” problem. Multiple unsigned drafts are found on the decedent’s desk, with no clear final version. Your loved ones are left to argue among themselves and in court over what your true intent was.

Legal Advice and Establishing a Need-to-Know Basis for Your Plan

Your death is more than an administrative process, but thinking about your estate plan in that way can inform practical choices that make wrapping up your estate smoother for everyone involved.

An estate plan works best when paired with a communication plan that shares the right amount of information with the right people at the appropriate time, balancing privacy with transparency and flexibility.

If you are unsure how to strike that balance, call us to discuss your plan and devise the best strategy for informing your loved ones.