Data Organization

Your survivors will need much information about your wishes and assets to execute tasks on your behalf in case of your incapacity or death. They need to take care of payments, legal requirements, final rites, dispose possessions, and distribute your assets.have to distribute and dispose your assets. If there is a surviving spouse, these tasks may be a little less difficult. If you are single or you both die in a short interval, the surviving family could have a more difficult task. Hopefully, you have an Estate Plan and at least one of the survivors knows where it can be located. Even with the plan in place, the after-death tasks are much more difficult and time consuming, if the survivors do not know exactly where your documents are and what you own and owe. Even if your estate is quite small, an Estate Data Organizer with a list of assets, document locations, and after-death instructions* is essential. The Organizer will be very helpful to your Personal Representative (Executor) to identify all your assets and liabilities and the needed documents to execute your wishes with much less effort and in less time. An Estate Data Organizer designed by one of our Seniors is described here.

If you have been the sole active manager of your estate and your spouse has been a passive or disinterested partner, a set of instructions on what to do if you die first will be of great help.