Phil's Personal Finance Tip of the Day:
Half of Americans Set to Die Without a Will
By Lisa Scherzer | The Exchange – Tue, May 1, 2012 3:31 PM EDT
If you died tomorrow, who would inherit your assets? Your house? Your Snapfish albums?
If you're like half of American adults, you haven't made a will and therefore — legally speaking — haven't answered these questions.
A survey from RocketLawyer.com, a legal services web site, last month found that 50% of Americans with children do not have a will. Even more alarming, 41% of baby boomers (age 55-64) don't have one. The top three reasons cited by survey respondents for not having a will: procrastination, a belief that they don't need one and cost.
[Related: How Long Will You Live, Exactly? Ask the Calculator.]
So what happens if you die without a will (known as dying "intestate")? The state will decide how your property is distributed. "You don't want the default to be what the state law is — sometimes it could work out in your favor, but sometimes it can't," says Jason Smolen, an estate planning lawyer and founding principal of SmolenPlevy.
Shifts in demographic patterns are making estate plans even more critical. As the survey notes, in the past five years the number of unmarried couples has jumped, according to the National Marriage Project. Throw a child into the mix and the surviving partner doesn't get the same protections that are default under law for a married couple.
Don't forget your 'digital estate'
And no doubt you've heard about the digital afterlife. According to the RocketLawyer survey, 63% of respondents don't know what happens to their digital assets when they die. Traditional estate planning doesn't take into account this emerging class of assets — and it's not just thinking about what you want to happen to your Facebook page or Match.com profile.
Your survivors may not even be aware of the extent of your online presence. Consider your online bank accounts, email accounts, iPod and all its music, blogs, photo albums, YouTube account, eBay account, PayPal account, e-book collection, Gilt Group subscription…you get the picture. Even your U.S. savings bonds are online.
Most popular online account services like Facebook, Gmail, LinkedIn and Twitter have developed deceased-user policies, which provide the family or executor of the deceased user with information about what's required to access the account.
"This is a problem most people don't know they have," says Smolen. His advice? Make a list of your accounts and passwords and print it out. His firm is in the process of setting up an online service for their clients to catalog their digital assets, as are others. Both RocketLawyer and LegalZoom have introduced services to address this rising need, allowing consumers to create a trust to manage their digital assets.
To read the rest of the article by Lisa Scherzer | The Exchange:
Quote of
the Day from Dave Ramsey.com:
Sticking to it is the genius. — Thomas Edison
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