Avoiding the Scavenger Hunt for Your Estate

By: Bill West, CPA - Tax Member of Scott and Company CPAs

There are three certainties in life: death, taxes (which explains my career choice), and no rule applies all the time in English. (This last item is compliments of my 7th grade English teacher, Mrs. Mullinax.) This article is about the first event in that list. 


Recently, several members of our firm have experienced the death of a loved one, in which our member was asked to handle the estate. For all involved, this task proved problematic, not necessarily for reasons you might imagine. Ultimately, it became a scavenger hunt.

Some of the bad things that can happen include:

• Over-drafted checking accounts due to quarterly charitable donations.
• Lapsed homeowner policies set up on auto-draft due to credit cards being disabled at death and then trying to get insurance reinstated on unoccupied real estate.
• Multiple months of charges accrued since no one knew how to turn off the service.
• A storage unit almost being auctioned due to non-payment because no one knew it existed.
• Excess fees to drill safe deposit boxes due to lost keys.

As our economy has evolved, paper records have been replaced by electronic records, which can disappear with the demise of your loved one's digital footprint.

In addition to having a will, power of attorney, and healthcare power of attorney, you should also encourage your loved ones to create a Next of Kin list. A commercial product is available—see theNOKBOX.com. We have also created a PDF document that is somewhat similar, albeit not as thorough, and can be accessed through this link: https://bit.ly/4dOydeL

The Next of Kin list is a comprehensive list of your financial accounts, credit cards and loans, obligations, insurance policies, assets, real property, and the location of important records. 

Specifically, any list should include:

• Location of wills, important documents, contact information for attorney and accountant.
• Bank accounts and credit card information, including account and routing numbers, contact phone numbers, logins and passwords, and two-factor authentication.
• Utility accounts (Power, water, phone, cable, and streaming) with associated logins, passwords, and two-factor authentication.
• Real Estate owned and rented, including storage units.
• Life, auto, and homeowners’ insurance policies, including the amount of insurance premiums, agents, how the policy was paid, and the payment cycle.

You should note this information should be kept under lock and key as it will or should contain logins and passwords. Alternatively, you could create a list to pass to your planned administrator and a separate list for which you share the location of passwords and logins.