Solana Beach Wealth Management Advice: Planning for Your

Family’s Life after Your Death, PART 1

This five-part article series provides a detailed discussion of the various important financial documents anyone should gather

together to leave behind for their family. It’s never pleasant thinking about or discussing plans to be implemented after you exit this mortal coil, but planning is fundamental if you are leaving behind a family that needs to be looked after. This, according Solana Beach wealth management professionals, is especially the case when more and more insurance companies – some of the country’s largest too – are getting away with not paying out their clients’ life insurance policies. According to these companies they’re not doing anything illegal. After all, it’s not their responsibility to find out whether or not their clients actually are still alive and therefore whether they owe a family a claim. Simply put, when planning for your family’s life after your death, it’s not enough to just sign the relevant documents. You need to leave comprehensive end-of-life instructions in the right hands and then ensure that your family gets them when you’re no longer here. You’ve got to gather together all the necessary documentation and leave them in a safe place, so that your family doesn’t need to fight for what’s rightfully theirs at a time when they should be grieving. Case In Point: Alexandra Stolzmann “My father was very organized in life and in death. He maintained an immaculate study, where not a single sheaf of paper was out of place. When he fell ill, he told me where to look in his study for the will. What I found at the location he specified was a key to a safe that I never even knew existed. Within the safe was the will, along with his life insurance documents, explicit instructions and a completely arranged and paid-for funeral plan. My mother was devastated when my dad passed away and the fact that he made the awful process of after-death administration so easy for us was one final gesture of his fathomless love for his family.” And so… in this five-part article series, we shall take a look at after-life planning and the important documents many Solana Beach financial advisors urge residents to gather together. The pharaohs believed in planning for life after death and considering their immense wealth, they may just have gotten it right!

The Consequences of Not Planning for Your Death $32.9 billion is the amount of money sitting unclaimed in the various assets and banks accounts held by people who have passed away and have not left behind clear enough or accessible instructions for their heirs. This is according to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators. Who legally owns this money then? State treasurers, that’s who. Not the families who could have used those dollars to pay for decent funerals, to pay off their mortgage or to send children or grandchildren to college. The message, according to Solana Beach financial advisors, is loud and clear: If you don’t keep your documents in order and if you don’t make them available to your family, they could suffer some very real and serious financial consequences! What Should I Do? Gather together all the documents your family could possibly need, such as banking

details, property deeds, brokerage accounts, insurance policies, etc. Ensure that they are up-to-date and relevant, Put them in a folder with written instructions, Lock these documents in a fireproof safe at home and/or at your attorney’s office. You

can even create copies of each and keep one set at home and the other set at your attorney’s.

Make sure that one other trustworthy person has a key to the safe or knows the combination!

The important question now is what documents should you gather together? Stay tuned for the second installment of this five-part article series to find out!