“I was left in the dark,” said Sarah from Boulder, Colorado. “MyEstateManager.com walked me through the funeral planning process and lifted a tremendous weight off my shoulders.” Former Executors, Personal Representatives, Administrators, Beneficiaries and general family members have visited the site, all registering a similar message: “simple, powerful…needed right now”.

The site, launched summer 2009, provides an easy-to-use roadmap that guides users through the months’ long or even years long estate administration process, with a timeline and checklist to better understand and manage the laundry list of complex tasks along the way. For each step, families can get help from a trusted network of Service Partners across the country. “Our network will cover as many as twenty categories of business professionals – funeral directors, estate attorneys, financial planners, hospice, retirement communities and more,” said Hank Carabelli, Co-Founder of MyEstateManager, LLC.

Over a year in the making, MyEstateManager.com began with extensive research by Nielsen Online and others to find out what mattered most to customers along the entire spectrum of estate planning and administration. “We know firsthand that people are looking for trusted local service provider recommendations,” said Carabelli. “MyEstateManager.com will deliver that by partnering with high quality service providers that have a third-party seal of approval based on background checks, business history, customer testimonials and standing in the community.” MyEstateManager’s Charter Service Partner Network is launching initially in Colorado and Florida, with additional professionals throughout the country signing on continuously thereafter. Regardless of location, families can benefit immediately by visiting the site, using the step-by-step timeline and checklist and sharing thoughts or taking advantage of personal concierge services through MyPersonalAdministrator. Additional content and services will be added over the coming year, with current plans including a Digital Lockbox™ for safe, secure storage of financial and legal documents as well as important photos and memories that families want to share.

About My Estate Manager
MyEstateManager, LLC, was founded in 2009 to offer peace of mind during one of life’s most traumatic transitions–managing an estate when someone dies. MyEstateManager.com is a comprehensive, one-stop site that provides families with a full roadmap to better navigate the complexities of estate administration–with education, critically-needed information and resources, an easy-to-use timeline and checklist, and the ability to get help from experts and other members in similar situations. For each step of the process, the site enables families to obtain assistance from a trusted network of service partners across the country who have been thoroughly and objectively reviewed by an independent third party; therefore saving families time, money and grief. For those businesses interested in offering to their clients the rich content and tools that MyEstateManager.com provides in a non-competitive, self-branded environment, the company also offers a Private Label program.

While shopping at a running store, I found Bodyglide, a product that helps protect runners from blisters.  As I considered whether Bodyglide was worth the few dollars I would have to pay for it, I glanced at the package of Bodyglide.  I noticed on the package the reminder to the potential purchaser that “Prevention Is Better Than A Cure.”

Upon reading this reminder, I decided to purchase the Bodyglide.  After all, the applications of a few Band-Aids and ointments after each of my upcoming runs and even a possible visit to a dermatologist (and fighting with the insurance company, which may refuse to pay for treatment for such a minor injury), would cost in dollars, four-letter words, and moments on the couch instead of the boardwalk, many times more than the price of a package of Bodyglide.  As I ran, without blisters, I recalled the many times I am reminded in my law practice that “Prevention is Better Than A Cure.”

I am usually reminded in my law practice that “Prevention is Better Than A Cure” when I discuss attorney’s fees with potential clients.  For example, a potential client’s father chose the cheapest possible will from the cheapest possible attorney he could find.  As a result, typos and ambiguities in the will resulted in the potential for thousands of dollars of attorney’s fees that the potential client would pay in litigation to ascertain the intent of his father.

Another time, I spoke with a potential client undergoing a bankruptcy.  The potential client was frustrated that his attorney would not return his telephone calls or emails.  During our discussion, the potential client admitted that a better, yet more expensive, attorney would have communicated with him and provided him with a better repayment plan. The potential client then conceded that a better, yet more expensive, attorney in the long run would have saved him money, aggravation, and time.

In my discussions with potential clients, I stress that higher attorney’s fees that enable an attorney to produce high-quality legal documents that prevent legal blisters—litigating the drafter’s intent, unreasonable delays, and unreturned phone calls—may cost the potential clients far less money, aggravation, and time than curing the blisters that inferior legal work causes.

Neil I. Rumbak is a wills, tax, trusts & estates, probate, corporate, and real estate attorney with Rumbak Law, P.A., in Pompano Beach, Florida.  Visit Rumbak Law’s website at www.rumbaklaw.com.

The mere thought of spending ANY money involves a long decision process and even after someone commits, they may decide to pull back because of personal economic fears.  Life in general seems to also be getting more complicated, despite all the technology and communications tools that are available to us.

We are all constantly being put through many “tests” and seem to be always searching for that “safe and happy” place for ourselves and for our families, both mentally and physically, in order to remain sane.

I’ve been an insurance agent for many years.  It’s a very fulfilling role and every day is different.  I’m always meeting new people and I enjoy helping.

I work with both large corporations as well as individuals and their family members.  For companies, I specialize in offering long-term care insurance.  For individuals, I specialize in providing the full gamut of insurance policies – everything that is insurance.

But back to long-term care insurance for a moment…I’ve found that the only people interested in listening to a speech on this type of insurance are those who have had a relative or friend go through getting older, needing help with care or those that are helping to pay for activities of daily living for those in such a situation.

But this is part of a larger trend that I want to stress…

People Don’t Know What They Need Until They Need It Most!

Through the many years I have spent in the insurance industry, I have only come across a handful of clients who are truly organized when it comes to keeping their insurance and financial files updated and all of their folders in a safe and central place.

These clients seem to almost obsess over making sure that their loved ones know exactly what to do and where to find everything with regards to their insurance policies and finances for after they have passed on. Many of them are retirees who have lived a long and productive life and now unfortunately have more time on their hands to constantly worry about the future of their children and grandchildren.

They want to make sure they are able to help them as much as possible, even after death.

Aside from these few highly-organized and sometimes overly-concerned clients, and considering how our busy and stressful most of lives are, who really has the time and energy these days to keep up with all the work required in maintaining the folders, and constantly make sure we are not leaving anything out?

So why am I writing this today? Am I trying to sell you insurance? Is this an advertisement or sales pitch? No, No No…The point of my story is that I am happy to report that I have found a tool, a tool that is truly priceless.

The tool is Knowtification, and it is one of the best solutions that truly makes our lives easier during difficult times.

It’s the one of those services that requires little time to sign-up (less than a minute) and is not a large or long-term financial commitment.  Pay it once and be done.  It’s that simple.

Adding Knowitifcation, I truly believe, will contribute to you finding that “safe and happy” place in life, which I believe is a very good thing.  I sell insurance, all types of insurance, so when I see an insurance-like product come along with this power, I have to recommend it.  I have to because I care about people, that’s why I sell them insurance and advice, because I know it can help them…and that makes me happy.

About Andres
Serving as a Certified Long-Term Care Insurance Specialist since August of 2005, Andres Gonzalez has worked with individuals, families and companies for more than 10 years.  He protects lifestyles and helps preserve the wealth of his clients through individually customized life, health, disability and long-term care insurance solutions.  Andres has a Master’s Degree in Business Administration and is the founder of the Constant Care Network, a hand-picked directory made up of professional service providers who focus on serving seniors and their families in a caring, honest and respectful manner. Visit www.ConstantCareNetwork.com to view the current directory listing.

As an insurance broker, Andres represents all the top-rated carriers which means he is on your side and works for you and not for any individual insurance company.  He is a dedicated and community-minded professional who constantly helps those around him by educating and guiding them through a comprehensive planning process.  His goal is to help you and your family increase the chance of a better future through education and awareness.  Contact Andres to schedule your no obligation consultation by calling toll-free 1-877-LTC-1233 and learn more about how you can best protect your future today.

Andres Gonzalez, MBA, CLTC
Certified Long-Term Care Specialist

So a thought-provoking question must be posed that many of us simply don’t think about until the time comes – what happens to our online life after we pass on and most importantly, how can that online legacy be protected? After all, you don’t want just anyone getting access to a loved one’s account. Unfortunately, there is no one law, rule or regulation that covers all email accounts and social networks. Some sites don’t have policies at all. That means responsibility falls to the people closest to the deceased to take action. So let’s take a closer look at the steps to consider in order to ensure this valuable information is in the right hands or safely deactivated.

First, get your Info Checklist ready.
As you may inevitably need to provide this information to either request that the account be deleted or that you’d like to access it, gather the following prior to contacting email providers and social network administrators:

• The deceased’s email address
• Photocopy of the death certificate or obituary
• Relevant information to the deceased such as first and last name, date of birth, city, state, zip code and date last signed into the account
• Proof that you are allowed to access the email
• Your email address
• Photocopy of your Driver’s license
• It may also be helpful to have recent emails from the deceased to you to further prove a relationship

EMAIL
Above all else, almost everyone has an email address, so make this your first area to address (and don’t wait over a year to do it or certain services may make the decision for you by deleting the account). What you need to keep in mind is that different accounts have different policies, so identify the source of where the loved one’s primary emails originate from.

Yahoo has the simplest and most stringent of policies – when a person dies, Yahoo will not grant access by anyone else to that deceased user’s account. In other words, if you are concerned that your loved one has private information that others may access, they will have a very difficult time doing so if your loved one had a Yahoo account for email. It’s not impossible to get access if Yahoo will allow you to reset a password, but this will be a tougher path to pursue than Gmail or Hotmail.

Gmail and Hotmail will allow the account of the deceased to continue if the family wishes (or not). If the next of kin can provide proof of death to these services and has a desire to access the account, they can do so once Google or Hotmail verifies the information supplied.

SOCIAL NETWORKS
Posts and comments on a loved one’s social network can’t simply continue as is. The page needs to be taken down or quickly modified. Fortunately, I find most social networks are helpful in this regard.

Facebook and MySpace
Like Yahoo’s policy, Facebook and MySpace make it difficult for the next of kin to access the account to be edited further, but will allow the account to be removed.
This said, what I like about the way Facebook handles a deceased user’s account is that at least it will convert that individual’s page into a memorial page upon the family’s request. This protects the user’s account from inappropriate access while notifying close family and friends of the event.

Twitter

While you can’t gain further access to a Twitter account of the deceased, you can delete an account. All you need to provide Twitter is your contact information, relationship to the deceased, the username of the account (this is where a service like Entrustet comes in handy – see below) and a link to the obituary. Having this information may enable you to ask Twitter to provide a backup all of the person’s tweets up to this point.

Creating a “Digital Will”
Among those of us who want to be proactive now regarding our digital assets, a new service launched this year called Entrustet (entrustet.com) can help. Entrustet enables you to designate what happens to certain accounts and whether you would like to leave each account to an heir or be deleted completely.

******************************************************************************************************

Sure, many accounts may eventually be deleted due to inactivity, but why take a chance with a loved one’s precious and personal information after their passing? Take matters into your own hands and close the account rather than wait until later for your own peace of mind.

If access to the account is your goal – and the site allows you access at all – it’s not strange to have a conversation now among closest family members where you all can gain access to vital account passwords. This extends far beyond email and social networks, of course, so when in doubt over what types of financial accounts your loved one has owned, turn to us at Knowtification for help with uncovering that information too.

I’m interested in getting your take on this since it’s a relatively new concept. Have you ever thought about having a game plan with those closest to you for “just in case” where they could know your most vital usernames and passwords? Does reading this inspire you to start?

To me, it’s tears.

It’s interesting the word “tears” because it has more than one meaning in the English language.

There is the common definition of “fluid appearing in or flowing from the eye as the result of emotion, especially grief.”

But the same spelling also yields “to pull apart or in pieces by force, especially so as to leave ragged or irregular edges.”

Whichever the definition, it seems as though tears are what happens when tragedy strikes, especially when death ensues.  There is no doubt that a family goes through the worst during the loss of a loved one, from trying to cope with the death to trying to settle the estate…tears are abound.

When I lost my dad, the only thing I could do was cry.  I cried for the life I shared with him and the fact that this was my last memory I would ever have with him.  I’m not an emotional individual, but with the loss of my dad, it seemed as though tears were outside of my control, the natural reaction to loss.  I know I don’t stand alone in my feelings, from the emails I receive and the faces of those who have lost someone close, I have come to appreciate the fact that tears are almost a universal bond we share.

Yet the alternative meaning of the word is also quite universal among those that have gone through tragedy ending in death.  Tears come after tears, and I don’t meant the rush of water…people cope with death in different ways, some through hiding their emotions, some through drinking their emotions away and some through relying on others to provide emotional support.  And although there is no single way that people deal with death, there seems to be a common thread that ensues…the tearing apart of a family.

Because we all deal with our emotions in different ways, we cannot truly understand how others are feeling, how they will respond or react to a given situation.  Therefore, it is extremely critical that families talk, that they share their feelings with one another.  This may be mediated by a professional counselor or through the help of a non-biased friend.  When nations don’t speak, they go to war.  When family members don’t speak, the fibers of relationship tears…

Don’t let this happen.  Be the person who initiates conversation, the one who makes suggestions on getting together for an hour to just talk, the one who researches what to do.  Death has a funny way of bringing out the worst, the tears oftentimes moisten the fabric of a family just enough to cause…tears.

How can we regain our strength to love again when the pain of loss is with us, carried by us all of the time?  What enables us to move on? Time.  Voltaire stated “the art of medicine is in distracting the patient, while time does the healing.”  It is without a doubt that the weight of sadness becomes easier to bear over time.  Is it because we forget? Is it because we grow bigger to contain that sadness?

There is so much beauty in the world that needs to be experienced, so many flowers to be smelt and felt, so many clouds to watch pass overhead, so many sunsets to be enjoyed.  As time does the healing, continue to remember, but continue to live.  Death should be a reminder to us all that we too shall have our numbers called.  But before we are asked to leave the show of life, we should enjoy it as much as we can….

For example, nearly everyone has a broad range of accounts, from banks to credit cards and retirement plans, as well as investment portfolios, life insurance, and more. There are approximately 926 million total deposit and loan accounts in the U.S., with the average American holding 3.1 bank accounts. Additionally, 173 million U.S. citizens have at least one credit card, and the average balance carried on each card is $1,157. Fifty-two percent of all American households have at least one retirement account, and 23% of all U.S. households have a life insurance policy. The average face value of the life insurance policies is approximately $255,000, and the average 401(k) account is currently worth about $50,000.  Additionally, more than $32 billion in unclaimed money sat in state treasuries at the end of 2008 from a variety of sources including unclaimed paychecks, abandoned bank accounts, stock and bond certificates, consumer product rebate checks, and utility deposits.  In 2006 alone, $4.686 billion was added to that figure from business accounts where contact with the owner had been lost.

Clearly, when people die, their loved ones are left to deal with these accounts and debts, and they are offered only incomplete and often outdated guidance to help them with the burdensome tasks of handling these accounts. Furthermore, many records are incomplete and even the deceased may not have known the extent or location of all of their holdings.

Within the federal government, the U.S. Treasury Department reports that there are $16.6 billion worth of unredeemed savings bonds that have matured and are no longer earning interest. In fiscal year 2006, $1.754 billion of unclaimed money was returned to the rightful owner from 1.929 million accounts, yet another $4.686 billion was deemed unclaimed property in the same year from business accounts where contact had been lost with the owners.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation – a federal agency that protects pension benefits in private sector traditional pension plans – has held as much as $133 million in unclaimed pension benefits for approximately 32,000 people who were owed money from terminated defined benefit pension plans.

Individual benefits ranged from $1 up to $611,028, with an average of approximately $4,950. In addition, the National Registry of Unclaimed Retirement Benefits (NRURB) – responsible for keeping more than 50,000 individual retirement accounts for individuals who have forgotten 401(k), profit sharing, and other abandoned company-sponsored plan balances – states that the average abandoned 401(k) plan ranges between $600 and $1,000.

In February 2009, the Federal Reserve Board released its most recent statistics on consumer finances. The Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances for 2007 provides insights into changes in family income and net worth. According to the survey, 92% of all families hold transactional accounts (which are defined as deposit accounts held at a financial institution for the secure and rapid dispersal of funds through a variety or channels on demand), more than 52% have retirement accounts, and 23% of all families have life insurance policies with cash value.  In addition, recent analysis from BusinessWeek states that American 401(k) plan assets totaled $2.4 trillion in 2008 (according to data from the Employee Benefit Research Institute). The average 401(k) participant’s balance was $50,200 in 2008.

The average American has 3.1 bank accounts, and there are approximately 926 million total deposit
and loan accounts in the U.S. The average number of accounts per financial institution are 52,130. For reference, the largest bank and financial holding companies are listed below, ranked by market cap (as of June 2009).

Largest U.S. Bank and Financial Holding Companies
Name Market Cap
JPMorgan Chase & Co. $126.38B
Wells Fargo & Company $99.26B
Bank of America Corporation $76.64B
Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. $72.09B
Barclays PLC (ADR) $39.65B
U.S. Bancorp $29.23B
Morgan Stanley $28.00B
American Express Company $26.62B
Citigroup Inc. $14.83B
Regions Financial Corporation $2.67B

American International Group, Inc. $1.28B
According to LIMRA International – a worldwide association of insurance and financial services companies – the face value of the average life insurance policy sold in 2006 was $255,861. In general, the amount of life insurance coverage for insured husbands is approximately $235,000; the average amount for insured wives is about $147,000. The top 50 U.S. life insurance companies represent 85% of the total life insurance written in the U.S.

Despite the powerful technologies that have been invented in the last 20 years, there has yet to be an efficient resource that can help families plan funerals and settle the accounts of their loved ones…until now.

As you can see, even the wealthiest individuals with their teams of estate attorneys, accountants and investment advisors forget about assets.  Things slip between the cracks.  Instead of being paid to family members, these assets are being lost, forgotten or being seized by the State governments to go into Unclaimed Property.

When my father died in March, it was an incredibly difficult time for my family.  We had no idea what to do, who to contact and where to turn.  Being familiar with the Internet, I decided to look for online resources that would provide some insight into the process of settling an estate and making the funeral process simpler for my family and friends to obtain details and information.  I was surprised to see that nothing existed.  There was nothing available that really provided sound advice and a real method for helping the family members.

I hope that you take a few minutes and visit www.knowtification.com to see the resources that we have created for the American public.