Every Second Counts – Why Gentreo Includes the Gentreo Digital Family Vault
Creating the estate planning documents you need to prepare, plan and protect your family is just the first step. Next, you need to make sure they are easy to find and accessible so the documents can be used.
The two key components of Gentreo are our Digital Family Vault and Team sharing, which are two distinct but symbiotic features. Again, having completed estate planning documents is not enough. These critical documents need to be stored in a location that is easily accessed, but is still safe and secure.
It is not unusual today for American families to be spread out across multiple states. For example, having a paper Health Care Proxy in your filing cabinet in Massachusetts, does not help you in an emergency when your brother, who is your health care agent, lives in Pennsylvania. He needs to be able to access and share the document with your health care providers in the event of an emergency. If your estate planning and emergency documents are not available, you might as well not have completed them. They are useless if they can’t be accessed in an emergency.
Especially now, in light of families being more spread out and the social distancing caused by the pandemic, it is all the more important that these documents are stored where they can be accessed online.
In the past, your financial advisor may have given you a Black Book to complete with all of your emergency documents. Unfortunately, even if you filled out this book, you’ve probably lost it. Even if you know exactly where it is, does your agent for your Health Care Proxy or Power of Attorney know where it is? Do they have easy and quick access to it? Probably not.
Gentreo recommends storing all of your emergency planning and estate documents in one place, and sharing them with trusted family members or individuals you’ve named as your agent(s). Preferably, you should store these documents in a secure digital location such as the Gentreo Digital Family Vault, so the documents can be accessed immediately in an emergency, no matter how far away your agent or loved ones are.
Consider the case of your college student who is studying in another state. When a crisis happens, you need access to the documents immediately. You do not want to have to deal with the court system in another state remotely, when your child has a health care crisis. Sadly, in these times, a healthcare crisis for a young adult is within the realm of possibility. If they are 18 years of age or older, they are considered an adult and you will not be able to get information or make decisions on their behalf unless they complete a Health Care Proxy naming you as an agent or authorized person under HIPAA.
Gentreo is an online estate planning solution that empowers you to create your essential estate planning documents; store them and other important documents and information in your secure Gentreo Digital Family Vault and share them through the Team sharing feature with your chosen loved ones.
Creating the documents is not enough, they need to be safely stored and easily accessible. The Gentreo Digital Family Vault is a secure, time-saving solution when every second counts.
