*Tips are not legal advice
What Bank Eggs Should I Add?
Remember that there are two purposes for your eggacy account – information that makes your life easier AND information that makes it easier for your loved ones AFTER your life.
STEP #1: Start by just LISTING YOUR ACCOUNTS. You’d be surprised how many couples don’t know about all the accounts that their partner has. This is a great spot to just list them all. Add an egg for each account you can think of – checking accounts, saving accounts, joint accounts, personal accounts, business accounts, any other financial account that makes sense here. You may ALSO want to add Info Cards or Files per account… to track online access, maybe a scanned record/reference for the account…
Note – If you’ve got more than one of an account type at the same bank, then you can use the bank name field to specify.
STEP #2: Once they’re all listed, go back and flesh them out. Add information (notes and/or Info Cards) that will be USEFUL TO YOU AND YOUR LOVED ONES – maybe notes on what they’re used for. Maybe Info Cards so you can store online access info / passwords, etc.
As you’re going through the process of listing accounts, you may realize that there are accounts tied to other EGGs that are not necessarily accounts you use. For example, you might have an account somewhere that was setup specifically for an auto-loan. OR you may have an account tied to your medical insurance. How you reference things is up to you. Generally speaking we suggest that you use your EGGs to echo your thoughts. SO if you’re thinking of managing your Auto-Loan, then you might want to make a VEHICLE EGG and reference the loan account in an associated Info Card.
A note about passwords & security – while Eggacy is as secure as anything online can be, we understand if you don’t want to keep passwords in here. Remember that ANY information is going to be helpful in an emergency… so perhaps, if you’re nervous about posting too much, just leave hints or enough information so your loved ones can interpret and take action. Example – we’ve seen people who prefer to leave hard copies in a lock box or something just use eggacy to create a list of what’s there and clues as to where to find the corresponding hard copy data.
What if I Need Advice for Reconciling My Loved One’s Affairs?
If you are a KeyHolder and have lost your loved one, we are sorry and we’re here to help!
There are tips within each Basket for reconciliation. There are also other articles and advice from our Eggsperts (click a category on the right to access those). Finally, you can CONTACT US if you need someone to talk to OR if you want us to help connect you to experts near you.
Suggestions for Reconciling Accounts:
- We suggest that you start by calling the banks and letting them know that your loved one is deceased. You will likely need to schedule an appointment to meet with someone and plan to bring your death certificate as well as your marriage license (in case you need to prove relationship).
- Remember that you do NOT want to close accounts yet – just notify the bank! You’ll want to leave an account active so that you can refer back to statements as part of your efforts to clean up everything else.
- Even though accounts may remain in tact for a while, you want them to cancel credit cards / debit cards… and offer you advice on any other automated transactions (things tied to auto-draft on CC, recurring checks, etc).
- Since bank accounts DO sometimes have a cost associated with them, we suggest that you ask them to waive those costs while you’re working to reconcile things. Some will and some won’t but it doesn’t hurt to ask.
- Once the bank is notified, and recurring bills are cancelled (or at least listed so you can cancel them after you notify each group – which there’s hopefully also an egg for), and cards are cancelled… THEN it’s time to print statements for records. We recommend that you print statements in case anything happens to the account or your access to it. Those statements will be a good fall-back in case there are any other recurring bills or accounts referenced there.
- Go through statements and, just like you did with auto/recurring bills, contact anyone else that seems to be a consistent presence in order to reconcile & close.
*Tips are provided to simply kick-start your thinking. They are NOT legal advice and we recommend that you consult an attorney if you have any questions about estate planning or living trusts or any such matters.