Estate planning allows you to plan the distribution of your possessions and assets after your passing. With estate planning, it’s not just your physical and financial assets that are taken into consideration, but also the discharge of duties.
The process involves the creation of different types of legal documents, like wills, powers of attorney, and even trusts.
Proper estate planning in the UK can help your legal heirs save on Inheritance Taxes (IHT) and reduce their tax liability. Additionally, it protects your possessions from intestacy laws, ensuring your property is distributed as per your wishes.
However, ensuring that your estate planning documents are safe and easily accessible by the relevant parties might be slightly difficult. That’s why it’s crucial to find a solution that makes it easier to manage your estate planning documents.
Fortunately, digitisation has permeated every aspect of our lives, from social interactions to financial transactions. Estate planning, too, can be digitised, saving you undue trouble.
We will be taking a look at all the advantages of digital estate planning. Let’s get started.
Why Should You Choose Digital Estate Planning?
Better Accessibility in Your Absence
If you’re mentally incapacitated or have passed away, it can be challenging for your attorney or family members to find your will or power of attorney (POA). Saving your estate planning documents on the cloud or a drive, like Google Drive or Dropbox, with access shared with your attorney is a great idea. It can save your family members from undue headaches during those tough times.
These e-documents can be easily accessed in case something untoward happens while you are travelling or out of home. After your demise, documents like POAs and wills have to be produced multiple times in front of authorities. When stored digitally, they can be accessed from anywhere, whether at the bank or for a will reading.
This brings us to our second point.
Keeps Your Document Secure
Travelling with such important documents might not always be the smartest option. Thanks to the growing instances of pickpocketing and snatching, you must be extra careful, whether on the tube or walking down the footpath. Fortunately, digital documents can prevent you from falling prey to such instances, ensuring the safety and security of these crucial documents.
On the other hand, with increasing cases of break-ins, keeping essential documents lying around your home isn’t the best idea. Additionally, physical documents are also more susceptible to damage from elements of nature, like fire, water or even “time”.
Keeping a copy of your will or power of attorney online keeps them secure from natural or external threats. To ensure data security, you can use strong passwords, have multi-factor authentication, and provide limited access to this digital folder. You can also encrypt your estate planning documents to further enhance their security. E-documents are, hence, much safer than keeping physical copies of estate planning documents.
Easier to Edit and Modify
Life is long and filled with circumstances that can cause fallouts between you and your benefactors. Or you may build a new relationship and want to add them to your will. All these situations require you to edit and modify your estate planning documents. This becomes incredibly simple with digital copies.
Rather than mailing your documents or visiting your advocate to make the modifications, you can simply email them a copy of your legal papers. Inform them about the changes, and they can do it in real time and send it for your approval.
With the digitalisation of your estate planning, all these changes can be done in minutes and from the comfort of your home. This is especially beneficial for elderly individuals or those who stay in remote locations and want to avoid long commutes.
It is an Eco-friendly Choice
It’s extremely important to make a sustainable choice in every aspect of your life, and estate planning shouldn’t be excluded. Digital estate planning can help you reduce your carbon footprint by avoiding the use of paper.
Legal documents like these are often expansive and exhaustive, requiring a lot of paper. Instead of printing hundreds of pages, you can store them digitally. Every year, acres of land are deforested to produce paper. So, why not opt for digital paperwork and do your bit to conserve the planet?
Moreover, paper prices have been rising over the last few years. This means that by choosing digital documents, you save the planet and your hard-earned money.
Cost-effective Solution
Renting a safe deposit box in a bank can cost a few hundred pounds annually. Also, they are low on availability, with huge waitlists in most banks. Installing a high-quality home safe is also expensive, and so is renting from specialist storage companies. The cost of storing documents on Google Drive or Dropbox is nil.
Do you know how expensive it can be to print all your estate planning documents? Printing your wills and POA can cost up to a few hundred pounds. This can include everything from the cost of paper, ink, binding, and, finally, courier (from the advocate’s office to your home). You can simply save all these associated costs by keeping e-versions of your estate planning documents.
In Summary
Estate planning can help you and your loved ones avoid unnecessary hassle, save on tax liabilities, and protect your estate from the laws of intestacy. Once you have created your estate plan, save it digitally. This has many advantages, such as better accessibility, secure storage, and easy modification. Digital documents are also more economical and sustainable than physical documents.
If you’re yet to create your own POA or will, maybe it’s time you consider drawing one up!
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