We have written posts in the past about the importance of choosing the right person as Executor of your estate, and discussed the responsibilities that come with this position. There are two specific challenges that face an estate administrator that are constantly brought to our attention at LegalWills.
Copyright: andreypopov / 123RF Stock Photo
The first is locating the Will. Almost every day we receive an email from somebody who is looking for a person’s Will. Somebody has died, they told everybody that they have a Will, but nobody can find it. We have discussed this previously and the most important piece of advice is to let your Executor know where your Will is stored. Where you store the document is a personal preference and there are pros and cons to every decision, but if your Executor doesn’t know where it is, there is little chance of your wishes ever being respected.
Once the Executor has found the Will, they are then granted the powers from the courts to administer the estate and this is where the work really starts. The Executor has to gather up all of the assets in the estate – but how will they know where all of the assets are held? Often a Will simply states that “my entire estate is to be shared in the following way; one third to person A, one third to person B….etc” How does the Executor know where to find every bank account, every insurance policy, every investment, every stock portfolio, or even that bundle under the floorboards! How does the Executor even know when everything has been identified.
The scope of this issue was brought into focus last week when Citibank created a 16 page supplement in the New York Daily News. The title read “The following persons appear from our records to be entitled to unclaimed property consisting of cash amounts of fifty dollars or more…”. I haven’t counted, but there appear to be thousands of names including the philanthropist and socialite Brooke Astor who died in 2007.
A significant proportion of these thousands of abandoned accounts should have been part of an estate, but the estate administrator had no idea that they existed. This list is for Citibank in New York, and it is reasonable to assume that every bank in every country has a similar list. This amounts to billions of dollars, pounds and euros held by banks, unbeknownst to the estate executors.
Of course, it doesn’t make sense to list every account in one’s Will; it would mean updating your Will every time a bank account was changed, or a stock portfolio was cashed out. At LegalWills.ca, USLegalWills.com and LegalWills.co.uk we encourage everybody to complete a form that allows them to itemize their personal assets as well as list important people to contact. This document does not have the same legal standing and does not need to be signed and witnessed; it can be updated any time an asset changes. It can then be stored with the Will so that the Executor has a complete inventory of assets at the appropriate time.
In our digital age of PayPal accounts, domain name purchases, online gambling accounts, blog revenues and other digital assets, it is more important than ever to communicate to your Executor exactly where your assets are held. Many people do not even know the true extent of their spouse’s accounts, and without a list stored with the Will, an Executor would never even know that they had missed an important or valuable asset.
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